In all of these works there is a resistance, a push back. Sometimes they talk of the physical sensation of being at the edge of change - a sinkhole, sleep, reality, cracks in pavements where life pushes through. Future things that pull the past along.
Including the work of Zara Mader, Gail Howard, Adele Vye, Sadia Pineda Hameed & Beau W Beakhouse and Phoebe Davies, Here, at the edge, today puts their work together for the first time as the g39 Fellowship comes to an end.
Zara Mader has been looking at the disruption and resistance of crossing stereotypes. Her ongoing brown punk series, with a focus on Poly Styrene, has profiled an underground scene, an underrepresented scene. Combined with Zine culture, fliers and street photography where the edges and corners of urban existence flourish.
Adele Vye explores physical and inner worlds. She is interested in conjuring and phenomena but also grounded by the everyday. Metaphors and magic, mourning and transformation all seep through her work. For Here, at the edge, today she is trying out new forms, an experiment in sleep and film works.
Sadia Pineda Hameed and Beau W Beakhouse are a collaborative duo. Their installations combine sculptural wood and metalwork with text, audio, film and performance to imagine autonomous and alternate futures; and to consider the relations between colonialism, labour and science fiction. Recent research into speculative architecture and social space has shaped a new installation, a prototype technology for association and communion across time.
Phoebe Davies' practice is often shaped by long-term fieldwork, regularly working with and in response to individuals, communities and locations. Through collaborating with intergenerational groups of performers and non-performers alike she generates work through performance to camera, freewriting and field recording. Her work habitually uses the lens, body and voice to explore the subtleties and tensions at the edges of visceral human experiences and personal politics.
Gail Howard’s work takes the form of a printed dialogue that swings between the mundane and domestic to profound existential questions. Printed on a weightless fabric, they hang the full length of the space and drift in and out of the exhibition. The work has a sort of circularity, a call and response in its search for reassurance and restless shifting of subject – always at the edge of change.
Here, at the edge, today is the tension between the way things are, the way things have been and the ways in which they can change.
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The show at g39 is in parallel with a show curated by The Freelands Foundation called Betwixt, 17/02/24 - 23/02/24, at their Chalk Farm gallery space as well as across several different sites including Mimosa House Gallery and a Crypt. Curated by Wingshan Smith and accompanied by a publication it marks the end of the programme.