Session 1: 22/03/21
6-8pm
Presenters: Holly Slingsby, Louisa Fairclough, Maurane Gadeau
Holly Slingsby
Bio
Holly Slingsby (born 1983, UK) is based in Margate, UK. She studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University; and the Slade School of Art, London. Her practice centres on performance and uses props, costumes and video. Her most recent work explores the female body in relation to fertility myths and medicine.
Holly has had solo exhibitions and performances at CRATE, Margate (2019); Margate Festival (2018); Bòlit, Centre d'Art Contemporani, Girona (2016); Tintype, London (2015); DKUK, London (2015); and SHIFT., London (2012). Her work has been shown at The Nunnery Gallery, London; The Horse Hospital, London; Turner Contemporary, Margate; Katzman Contemporary, Toronto; Matt’s Gallery, London; Pump House Gallery, London; Spike Island, Bristol; Modern Art Oxford; the Freud Museum, London; FEM Festival, Girona, Spain; Art Licks Weekend, London; the ICA, London; and the Barbican, London. In 2018 she published an artist’s book with Publication Studio London and The Bower; and participated in the international touring exhibition Transitional States: Hormones at the Crossroads of Art and Science.
hollyslingsby.com
Presentation
Holly will be presenting works in performance, video and painting made over the last ten years. Many of these works are connected by a use of the visual to try to articulate something hard to communicate in words. The presentation will track Holly’s interests in iconographic traditions, ritual as enactment of belief, and performance as an attempt at invocation, including works made in churches, galleries and other public spaces.
Louisa Fairclough
Bio
Louisa Fairclough lives and works in Bristol. Her work takes the form of film loops, performances, field recordings and drawings. She co-founded BEEF (Bristol Experimental & Expanded Film) with the core aim of supporting and nurturing experimental film practice in Bristol.
In 2017, Louisa had a solo show A Song Cycle for the Ruins of a Psychiatric Unit at Danielle Arnaud in London (November/December). Late at night on November 24th, VOICE IMAGES was performed over three hours by the Dieci Choir at Swiss Church, Covent Garden. VOICE IMAGES is a new composition devised with composer Richard Glover and commissioned by Being & Appearing. Earlier on in the year, Bore Song was shown at Rojas + Rubensteen Projects in Miami, and Louisa and Richard Glover presented two new compositions for Voice and Tape Loop performed by Samuel Middleton and George McKenzie as part of BEEF’s programe at the Brunswick Club in Bristol. Louisa graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art (MFA) in 2000 and is currently an Associate Lecturer at Oxford Brookes and Falmouth University. She lectured at the Slade from 2002 – 2008 and co-curated Mezz from 2009 – 2011. Louisa is represented by Danielle Arnaud.
louisafairclough.co.uk
Presentation
A series of film-sculptures and choral performances made in collaboration with composer Richard Glover interpret word-drawings by Hetta Fairclough as scores; formally, this work explores the potential of voice and its resonance in varying spaces from the Severn riverbank to the Thames estuary, from a cavernous stairwell to a former psychiatric hospital. Lockdown has both necessitated and galvanised a shift in Louisa’s working methodologies away from the collaborative. The solitude has enabled a concentrated period of learning music softwares to fuse a digital and analogue approach which pull on the artist’s own recording archives of choristers, tidal flows and the vocalisations of Hetta's drawings, which explore states of mania, depression and anxiety. The Religion and Art forum is an opportunity to perform this new music.
Maurane Gadeau
Bio
Maurane Gadeau (born 1999), known as Mrs Blues, is a French and Ivorian student currently in the BA Fine Art course at Goldsmiths University. Her spontaneity and ambition have always influenced her art practice, often characterised as intuitive and eclectic through her use of found objects and fabrics, mediums like clay or latex, but also painting, performance and film, along with an important interest in music.
Presentation
Mrs Blues will present a live performance of a song called Please Have Mercy on us (2020). ‘On Friday 27th of March 2020 I took my guitar and started singing for 10 minutes in my bedroom. I did not know what the lyrics were going to be nor the chords, but I was looking at the sky bright, light, and present. It is as if I was being watched, listened, accompanied. I could hear them sing with me, I could feel them smile at me... This happened during the first lockdown, so I was self-isolating in my apartment but, never have I ever felt so surrounded and Loved. Singing this song instantly brings me back to that moment, that smell, and that guilt taken away by Love. I hope people feel it too.’
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6-8pm
Presenters: Holly Slingsby, Louisa Fairclough, Maurane Gadeau
Holly Slingsby
Bio
Holly Slingsby (born 1983, UK) is based in Margate, UK. She studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University; and the Slade School of Art, London. Her practice centres on performance and uses props, costumes and video. Her most recent work explores the female body in relation to fertility myths and medicine.
Holly has had solo exhibitions and performances at CRATE, Margate (2019); Margate Festival (2018); Bòlit, Centre d'Art Contemporani, Girona (2016); Tintype, London (2015); DKUK, London (2015); and SHIFT., London (2012). Her work has been shown at The Nunnery Gallery, London; The Horse Hospital, London; Turner Contemporary, Margate; Katzman Contemporary, Toronto; Matt’s Gallery, London; Pump House Gallery, London; Spike Island, Bristol; Modern Art Oxford; the Freud Museum, London; FEM Festival, Girona, Spain; Art Licks Weekend, London; the ICA, London; and the Barbican, London. In 2018 she published an artist’s book with Publication Studio London and The Bower; and participated in the international touring exhibition Transitional States: Hormones at the Crossroads of Art and Science.
hollyslingsby.com
Presentation
Holly will be presenting works in performance, video and painting made over the last ten years. Many of these works are connected by a use of the visual to try to articulate something hard to communicate in words. The presentation will track Holly’s interests in iconographic traditions, ritual as enactment of belief, and performance as an attempt at invocation, including works made in churches, galleries and other public spaces.
Louisa Fairclough
Bio
Louisa Fairclough lives and works in Bristol. Her work takes the form of film loops, performances, field recordings and drawings. She co-founded BEEF (Bristol Experimental & Expanded Film) with the core aim of supporting and nurturing experimental film practice in Bristol.
In 2017, Louisa had a solo show A Song Cycle for the Ruins of a Psychiatric Unit at Danielle Arnaud in London (November/December). Late at night on November 24th, VOICE IMAGES was performed over three hours by the Dieci Choir at Swiss Church, Covent Garden. VOICE IMAGES is a new composition devised with composer Richard Glover and commissioned by Being & Appearing. Earlier on in the year, Bore Song was shown at Rojas + Rubensteen Projects in Miami, and Louisa and Richard Glover presented two new compositions for Voice and Tape Loop performed by Samuel Middleton and George McKenzie as part of BEEF’s programe at the Brunswick Club in Bristol. Louisa graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art (MFA) in 2000 and is currently an Associate Lecturer at Oxford Brookes and Falmouth University. She lectured at the Slade from 2002 – 2008 and co-curated Mezz from 2009 – 2011. Louisa is represented by Danielle Arnaud.
louisafairclough.co.uk
Presentation
A series of film-sculptures and choral performances made in collaboration with composer Richard Glover interpret word-drawings by Hetta Fairclough as scores; formally, this work explores the potential of voice and its resonance in varying spaces from the Severn riverbank to the Thames estuary, from a cavernous stairwell to a former psychiatric hospital. Lockdown has both necessitated and galvanised a shift in Louisa’s working methodologies away from the collaborative. The solitude has enabled a concentrated period of learning music softwares to fuse a digital and analogue approach which pull on the artist’s own recording archives of choristers, tidal flows and the vocalisations of Hetta's drawings, which explore states of mania, depression and anxiety. The Religion and Art forum is an opportunity to perform this new music.
Maurane Gadeau
Bio
Maurane Gadeau (born 1999), known as Mrs Blues, is a French and Ivorian student currently in the BA Fine Art course at Goldsmiths University. Her spontaneity and ambition have always influenced her art practice, often characterised as intuitive and eclectic through her use of found objects and fabrics, mediums like clay or latex, but also painting, performance and film, along with an important interest in music.
Presentation
Mrs Blues will present a live performance of a song called Please Have Mercy on us (2020). ‘On Friday 27th of March 2020 I took my guitar and started singing for 10 minutes in my bedroom. I did not know what the lyrics were going to be nor the chords, but I was looking at the sky bright, light, and present. It is as if I was being watched, listened, accompanied. I could hear them sing with me, I could feel them smile at me... This happened during the first lockdown, so I was self-isolating in my apartment but, never have I ever felt so surrounded and Loved. Singing this song instantly brings me back to that moment, that smell, and that guilt taken away by Love. I hope people feel it too.’
Top
Holly Slingsby
Approaching Viriditas (Epilogue) 2019, video still
Middle
Louisa Fairclough
Oh God, detail from drawing by Hetta Fairclough
Bottom
Maurane Gadeau
AKA Mrs Blues