The Bacchae: And In Their Companies Deep Wine-jars Stand, Forever and Anon. 2017
Mixed media sculpture and digital video.
The Bacchae are five singing sculptures, simultaneously ancient wine jars and contemporary disco balls inspired by the specific setting of The Bowling Green pub in Wigan and its regular karaoke nights. Developed with the regular patrons of the night and the pub’s landlady, Nancy Jones, who donated videos they filmed on their phones to the artist. The work posits overlooked spaces of celebration, intoxication and community within our present time as worthy contenders for speculative futures. The videos sit within the open mouths of the character jugs singing karaoke and engaging in jubilant revelry. The jugs are made from bright, glittering fabrics that evoke the costumes of party goers as well as referring to the maenads, female followers of wine cults in Ancient Greece often depicted on pottery, who wore animal skins around their shoulders on the occasion of their ecstatic full-moon ritual gatherings. They are lit by disco lights which cast their light throughout the exhibition and produce an atmosphere synonymous with communal festivity and the Greek concept of kephi - the energy of joy and passion.
These works were developed for the project: Our House of Common Weeds
Res. Enclave 1-3, 50 Resolution Way, London SE8 4AL
Exhibition open 28 October – 25 November 2017, Wed-Sat 12-6pm or by appointment
Friday 27 October 6-9pm preview feat. performance by Alys North + afterparty 9-11pm with DJ set by Bizarro World Friday 24 November 6-11pm closing event feat. performance by Carl Gent + karaoke with live link-up to The Bowling Green pub in Wigan
Verity Birt (London, UK), Fourthland (London, UK), Carl Gent (London, UK), Anna FC Smith (Wigan, UK), Andrea Williamson (Montreal, Canada). Curated by Nathalie Boobis
Our House of Common Weeds is a group exhibition curated by Nathalie Boobis for Res. featuring new work by artists Verity Birt, Fourthland, Carl Gent, Anna FC Smith & Andrea Williamson. It is the result of an eighteen month process of collaborative research into knowledge and ideas ravaged in the path of progress but still latent within stories, rituals, our bodies and the landscape. The artworks within Our House of Common Weeds suggest a constellation of other possible futures built with the disenfranchised wisdom from the realms of female, folk and indigenous cultures, prehistory, the ‘irrational’ and the non-human.
The forms of collaboration through which each artist has developed their ideas are directly reflective of the content of the work. Verity Birt’s sound, video and sculptural pieces exploring feminine mythologies, collectivity and prehistoric rock art have been realised through vocal workshops with Newcastle-based women’s choir, SHE, at Lordenshaw Channel and Roughting Lynn, Neolithic sites in Northumberland. Carl Gent’s folkloric well sculpture is the result of long term research into the fictions and mythologies of the Mercian Queen Cynethryth, the Victorian explorer Kate Marsden and conversations with the storytelling duo, Sheaf+Barley. Fourthland’s installation evoking a domestic scenario of matriarchal reign results from workshops with Xenia, an English language and friendship group for migrant women learning English and English-speaking women in Hackney, London. Anna FC Smith’s festive sculpture, video and sound work on the collective potential of communal intoxication, singing and revelry has been developed in collaboration with regular karaoke-goers at The Bowling Green pub in Wigan and its landlady Nancy Jones. Andrea Williamson’s large scale watercolour and pencil dreamscapes are developed in collaboration with the public archive of Canadian endangered species and the online dream-sharing community, r/Dreams.
The works in the exhibition bear traces of lived experience that the artists have identified as potent ingredients for other possible futures. Our House of Common Weeds proposes the aesthetic experience of the artworks as a set of tools for activating disenfranchised knowledge and interrupting the singular version of the future that is currently unfolding.
A limited edition zine featuring aspects of the research process, an essay by the curator and contributions by each of the exhibiting artists will be available to buy from Res. at the opening and throughout the duration of the exhibition.
www.commonweeds.xyz