Intension (the concept ‘dog’ encapsulates its ‘dogness’) / 1 June 2024 - 27 July 2024
Larry Achiampong, Becky Beasley, Lucas Dupuy, Elsa James, Sophie Jung, Kristian Kragelund, Ty Locke, Narges Mohammadi, Paula Morison, David Rickard, Rebeca Romero, Alberta Whittle, Gabby R and El Bass of Project Art Works
Becky Beasley
Flora, A Life, 2013
Edition of 3
Revolving postcard rack, 12 sets of postcards
165.1 x 30.5 x 30.5 cm
Neurodivergent people commonly experience heightened perception, heightened senses and heightened sensitivities. In visual terms alone this might be understood as the kind of world view the Cubists only dreamed of. At worst this is overwhelming or even unbearable, but at best this gives an incredibly rich and different view or perspective on the world. In Becky Beasley's, ‘Flora, A Life’ (2013), we are given a window into her panoramic mind and ways of exploring and expressing identity by other means. Presenting not just one image, but a carousel of postcards in one work, we are confronted with an array of images and information. The relationship between image and text has always been central to Beasley’s relation to practice and this work expresses this dynamic in the humanizing plenitude where the rational and irrational meet recto and verso on each postcard.
Please see the attached PDF for the artist's own deeper reflections on her work.
Download File
Becky Beasley
Becky Beasley (b. 1975, UK) is an award-winning visual artist, educator and advocate.She has participated in numerous international exhibitions, among them 80WSE Gallery (NYU), New York; Towner Gallery, Eastbourne; South London Gallery, London; Leeds City Gallery, Leeds; Spike Island, Bristol; Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, London; Tate Britain, London; Stanley Picker Gallery, London; Whitworth, Manchester; Bluecoat, Liverpool; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Kunstverein Freiburg; Kunstverein Munich; Kunsthalle Bern. She is shortlisted for the 2023 Freelands Award and received a Paul Hamlyn Award in 2018.
Flora, A Life, 2013
Edition of 3
Revolving postcard rack, 12 sets of postcards
165.1 x 30.5 x 30.5 cm
Neurodivergent people commonly experience heightened perception, heightened senses and heightened sensitivities. In visual terms alone this might be understood as the kind of world view the Cubists only dreamed of. At worst this is overwhelming or even unbearable, but at best this gives an incredibly rich and different view or perspective on the world. In Becky Beasley's, ‘Flora, A Life’ (2013), we are given a window into her panoramic mind and ways of exploring and expressing identity by other means. Presenting not just one image, but a carousel of postcards in one work, we are confronted with an array of images and information. The relationship between image and text has always been central to Beasley’s relation to practice and this work expresses this dynamic in the humanizing plenitude where the rational and irrational meet recto and verso on each postcard.
Please see the attached PDF for the artist's own deeper reflections on her work.
Download File
Becky Beasley
Becky Beasley (b. 1975, UK) is an award-winning visual artist, educator and advocate.She has participated in numerous international exhibitions, among them 80WSE Gallery (NYU), New York; Towner Gallery, Eastbourne; South London Gallery, London; Leeds City Gallery, Leeds; Spike Island, Bristol; Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, London; Tate Britain, London; Stanley Picker Gallery, London; Whitworth, Manchester; Bluecoat, Liverpool; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Kunstverein Freiburg; Kunstverein Munich; Kunsthalle Bern. She is shortlisted for the 2023 Freelands Award and received a Paul Hamlyn Award in 2018.
Paula Morison
A Synaesthete Counting, 2013-2020
Four-digit numbers from 0000 to 4999, listed in ascending numerical order in their colour form, as seen by one synaesthete; emulsion on paper, graph paper and balsa wood (housed in two framed sections)
83.5 x 174.5 x 5 cm (framed)
In this meticulous incidental abstract work, Paula Morison eloquently describes the experience of grapheme-colour synaesthesia, a neurological condition where one perceives numbers and/or letters as inherently coloured. The first of the 2 parts shows a list of numbers from 0000 to 2499 in their colour form. The second (not exhibited) continues on to 4999.
A Synaesthete Counting, 2013-2020
Four-digit numbers from 0000 to 4999, listed in ascending numerical order in their colour form, as seen by one synaesthete; emulsion on paper, graph paper and balsa wood (housed in two framed sections)
83.5 x 174.5 x 5 cm (framed)
In this meticulous incidental abstract work, Paula Morison eloquently describes the experience of grapheme-colour synaesthesia, a neurological condition where one perceives numbers and/or letters as inherently coloured. The first of the 2 parts shows a list of numbers from 0000 to 2499 in their colour form. The second (not exhibited) continues on to 4999.
Paula Morison
Sorry and Apologies: Emails, 2021
A year's worth of collected emails, both sent and received by the artist, apologising for being and replying late; digital image on smartphone
Dimensions variable
With the fast pace of contemporary life and the numerous means of instant communication now at our disposal, many are struggling to keep up. Paula Morison has here collected a year’s worth of her own emails, both sent and received, that apologise for being and replying late. She is interested in demonstrating this struggle to get everything done and looking at anxiety in relation to ideas of efficiency and productivity.
Paula Morison
Paula Morison is a conceptual artist working in a variety of media. Her research focuses on how humans try to exert perceived control over their existence and how an individual might navigate various systems during this quest. She loves data, time and things that can be measured and recorded.
Paula Morison was born in Swindon in 1985. She studied at University of Wales, Institute Cardiff from 2005-2008 and Slade School of Fine Art, London from 2017-2019. She lives and works in London.
Sorry and Apologies: Emails, 2021
A year's worth of collected emails, both sent and received by the artist, apologising for being and replying late; digital image on smartphone
Dimensions variable
With the fast pace of contemporary life and the numerous means of instant communication now at our disposal, many are struggling to keep up. Paula Morison has here collected a year’s worth of her own emails, both sent and received, that apologise for being and replying late. She is interested in demonstrating this struggle to get everything done and looking at anxiety in relation to ideas of efficiency and productivity.
Paula Morison
Paula Morison is a conceptual artist working in a variety of media. Her research focuses on how humans try to exert perceived control over their existence and how an individual might navigate various systems during this quest. She loves data, time and things that can be measured and recorded.
Paula Morison was born in Swindon in 1985. She studied at University of Wales, Institute Cardiff from 2005-2008 and Slade School of Fine Art, London from 2017-2019. She lives and works in London.
Sophie Jung
Her, 2023
Metal, fabric, Perspex, vintage photograph, umbrella
143.5 x 189 x 189 cm
Artists have often strived to make work that is truly intuitive, most notably those working within the Dada and surrealist movements. While these artists went to all manor of extremes to often fruitlessly pursue this state, for Sophie Jung there is no choice, it is her default. For her conceiving of a work in advance is impossible, but in freely associating existing objects she can build up rich narratives and personalities with heightened sensitives to the nature of these objects and their relationships.
Sophie Jung
Sophie Jung (lives in London and Basel) works across text, sculpture and performance, navigating the politics of re/re/representation and challenging the selective silencing that happens by concluding. She employs humor, shame, the absurd, raw anger, rhythm and rhyme, slapstick, hardship, friendship and a constant stream of slippages. Her sculptural work consists of bodies made up of both found and haphazardly produced attributes and defines itself against the dogma of an Original Idea or a Universal Significance. Instead it stands as a network of abiding incompletion, an ever changing choir of urgencies and pleasures, traumas and manifestations that communally relay between dominant and minor themes.
Recent exhibitions include Sanetroyem at E.A.Shared Space, They Might Stay The Night at Casino Luxembourg; Unsetting at Istituto Svizzero, Milan; Taxpayer’s Money for Frieze LIVE, Dramatis Personae at JOAN, LA; The Bigger Sleep at Kunstmuseum Basel; Come Fresh Hell or Fresh High Water at Blain Southern, London; Producing My Credentials at Kunstraum London; Paramount VS Tantamount at Kunsthalle Basel and Äppärät at Ballroom Marfa. She is currently working on a solo exhibition at Galerie Joseph Tang in Paris and her first monograph with Mousse Publishing. In 2016 and in 2019 she won the Swiss Art Awards and in 2018 she was the recipient of the Manor Kunstpreis. She was in the jury of the Swiss Performance Art Award between 2017 and 2019. She is an external mentor at Institute for Art, Gender and Nature, HGK Basel, holds a Lehrauftrag for Performance at Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe in a new member to the board of Kunsthalle Basel. She is a resident of the Istituto Svizzero Roma in 2022/23.
Her, 2023
Metal, fabric, Perspex, vintage photograph, umbrella
143.5 x 189 x 189 cm
Artists have often strived to make work that is truly intuitive, most notably those working within the Dada and surrealist movements. While these artists went to all manor of extremes to often fruitlessly pursue this state, for Sophie Jung there is no choice, it is her default. For her conceiving of a work in advance is impossible, but in freely associating existing objects she can build up rich narratives and personalities with heightened sensitives to the nature of these objects and their relationships.
Sophie Jung
Sophie Jung (lives in London and Basel) works across text, sculpture and performance, navigating the politics of re/re/representation and challenging the selective silencing that happens by concluding. She employs humor, shame, the absurd, raw anger, rhythm and rhyme, slapstick, hardship, friendship and a constant stream of slippages. Her sculptural work consists of bodies made up of both found and haphazardly produced attributes and defines itself against the dogma of an Original Idea or a Universal Significance. Instead it stands as a network of abiding incompletion, an ever changing choir of urgencies and pleasures, traumas and manifestations that communally relay between dominant and minor themes.
Recent exhibitions include Sanetroyem at E.A.Shared Space, They Might Stay The Night at Casino Luxembourg; Unsetting at Istituto Svizzero, Milan; Taxpayer’s Money for Frieze LIVE, Dramatis Personae at JOAN, LA; The Bigger Sleep at Kunstmuseum Basel; Come Fresh Hell or Fresh High Water at Blain Southern, London; Producing My Credentials at Kunstraum London; Paramount VS Tantamount at Kunsthalle Basel and Äppärät at Ballroom Marfa. She is currently working on a solo exhibition at Galerie Joseph Tang in Paris and her first monograph with Mousse Publishing. In 2016 and in 2019 she won the Swiss Art Awards and in 2018 she was the recipient of the Manor Kunstpreis. She was in the jury of the Swiss Performance Art Award between 2017 and 2019. She is an external mentor at Institute for Art, Gender and Nature, HGK Basel, holds a Lehrauftrag for Performance at Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe in a new member to the board of Kunsthalle Basel. She is a resident of the Istituto Svizzero Roma in 2022/23.
Kristian Kragelund
Untitled_Orchid_1, 2020
UV Printed, laser cut silicon semiconductor wafers mounted in artist frame
120 x 80 cm (framed)
'Untitled_ Orchid' is a series of laser-cut, UV printed silicon semiconductor wafers sourced from a US based production facility and are essential elements in the development of advanced micro-chips necessary in the R&D process of AI based facial recognition software.
On the surface of each work in this series are illustrations of artificial orchids - based not on an actual flower, but on the idea of a flower. The flowers of (real) orchids are increasingly applied in the AI processes involved in developing facial recognition software, partly due to their large genetic variety of colours and forms, and partly due to recently introduced data-protection legislation restricting the access for private contractors to governmental databases. Orchids evolve much in the same generational manner as humans; the ‘offspring’ of an orchid might look somewhat different than the parental plant, but its genealogy can be traced via geometrical scan in similar ways as a human face, therefore making them a valuable asset in computer-learning.
Put in the context of Kragelund’s own condition of recently diagnosed prosopagnosia (face blindness), there is an awkward paradox when something our society considers so innately human and meaningful can now be better done by a machine.
Kristian Kragelund
Kristian Kragelund (b. 1987) received his BA (Honours) in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins in London, UK and MFA from Columbia University in New York City, USA. He has exhibited widely internationally and his work is held in several private and public collections including The Danish Arts Foundation and as a permanent public commission in Whitechapel, London.
Kristian is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice is concerned with how value and power asserts itself within the structural formations of everyday life. With a research-driven approach to infrastructure and the built environment, he seeks to reveal the often hidden sites where violence and systemic control is enacted by the dynamics of capitalist production and consumption. Through a critical examination of commercial and industrial debris as ambivalent artefacts of the 21st century, he proposes a re-evaluation of the historical and material inertia of the object, and suggests its speculative potential as markers of the contemporary human condition.
Untitled_Orchid_1, 2020
UV Printed, laser cut silicon semiconductor wafers mounted in artist frame
120 x 80 cm (framed)
'Untitled_ Orchid' is a series of laser-cut, UV printed silicon semiconductor wafers sourced from a US based production facility and are essential elements in the development of advanced micro-chips necessary in the R&D process of AI based facial recognition software.
On the surface of each work in this series are illustrations of artificial orchids - based not on an actual flower, but on the idea of a flower. The flowers of (real) orchids are increasingly applied in the AI processes involved in developing facial recognition software, partly due to their large genetic variety of colours and forms, and partly due to recently introduced data-protection legislation restricting the access for private contractors to governmental databases. Orchids evolve much in the same generational manner as humans; the ‘offspring’ of an orchid might look somewhat different than the parental plant, but its genealogy can be traced via geometrical scan in similar ways as a human face, therefore making them a valuable asset in computer-learning.
Put in the context of Kragelund’s own condition of recently diagnosed prosopagnosia (face blindness), there is an awkward paradox when something our society considers so innately human and meaningful can now be better done by a machine.
Kristian Kragelund
Kristian Kragelund (b. 1987) received his BA (Honours) in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins in London, UK and MFA from Columbia University in New York City, USA. He has exhibited widely internationally and his work is held in several private and public collections including The Danish Arts Foundation and as a permanent public commission in Whitechapel, London.
Kristian is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice is concerned with how value and power asserts itself within the structural formations of everyday life. With a research-driven approach to infrastructure and the built environment, he seeks to reveal the often hidden sites where violence and systemic control is enacted by the dynamics of capitalist production and consumption. Through a critical examination of commercial and industrial debris as ambivalent artefacts of the 21st century, he proposes a re-evaluation of the historical and material inertia of the object, and suggests its speculative potential as markers of the contemporary human condition.
David Rickard
Sound of a Circle (Face), 2024
PLA Resin and Silver
30 x 30 x 7 cm
It is one thing to know that minds work differently, but it is another to see it. David Rickard's "Sound of a Circle" series makes physical and tangible three different neurodiverse minds, all responding to the same stimuli. The act of recording on vinyl venerates the material encoded, and the visual reference to wall mounted platinum LPs only heightens that feeling. The work was made in collaboration with Prof. Tina Forster, Body & Brain Laboratory, City University of London.
David Rickard
Following a degree in architecture, David Rickard went on to study art at Accademia di Brera in Milan and Central Saint Martins in London. His original studies in architecture have had a lasting impact on his art practice. Through a process-based practice his works investigate the inherent material properties of our surrounding environment and the spatial relationships between people, objects and architecture.
Constantly moving along a fine line between sculpture and performance, art and physics, Rickard’s work engages the viewer as an active player. Once the artist has established a trajectory, a combination of necessity and chance takes place, making the ordinary extraordinary and generating new readings of our surroundings.
Recent projects include Synthesis (heavy-chain), public commission for the Institute of Immunity and Transplantation, UCL London (UK), In the Air, Wellcome Collection, London (UK), Alpensinfonie, Hans Erni Museum, Lucerne (Switzerland), curated by Heinz Stahlhut, Landfall, Copperfield, London (UK), and Inaspettatamente (Unexpectedly), Cloud Seven, Frederic de Goldschmidt Collection, Brussels (Belgium).
Sound of a Circle (Face), 2024
PLA Resin and Silver
30 x 30 x 7 cm
It is one thing to know that minds work differently, but it is another to see it. David Rickard's "Sound of a Circle" series makes physical and tangible three different neurodiverse minds, all responding to the same stimuli. The act of recording on vinyl venerates the material encoded, and the visual reference to wall mounted platinum LPs only heightens that feeling. The work was made in collaboration with Prof. Tina Forster, Body & Brain Laboratory, City University of London.
David Rickard
Following a degree in architecture, David Rickard went on to study art at Accademia di Brera in Milan and Central Saint Martins in London. His original studies in architecture have had a lasting impact on his art practice. Through a process-based practice his works investigate the inherent material properties of our surrounding environment and the spatial relationships between people, objects and architecture.
Constantly moving along a fine line between sculpture and performance, art and physics, Rickard’s work engages the viewer as an active player. Once the artist has established a trajectory, a combination of necessity and chance takes place, making the ordinary extraordinary and generating new readings of our surroundings.
Recent projects include Synthesis (heavy-chain), public commission for the Institute of Immunity and Transplantation, UCL London (UK), In the Air, Wellcome Collection, London (UK), Alpensinfonie, Hans Erni Museum, Lucerne (Switzerland), curated by Heinz Stahlhut, Landfall, Copperfield, London (UK), and Inaspettatamente (Unexpectedly), Cloud Seven, Frederic de Goldschmidt Collection, Brussels (Belgium).
Ty Locke
Obnoxus Cabanara, 2024
Customised ball point pens
25 x 46 x 3 cm
Ty Locke uses the voice-to-text feature on his phone when a word is misspelled so badly that not even spell check can help. His mind also makes connections and associations that other peoples do not, and his focus when making is extreme. In compiling a chronological list of all the dictated spelling errors he was drawn to thinking about the first nemesis of many dyslexics – the pen itself, that instrument of school room torture. Here the tables have turned and in turn it is the pen not the person that must contort to fit, in a dark twist on the art markets long standing love affair with neon and normative spelling.
Ty Locke
Ty Locke's work draws inspiration from a multitude of sources, responding to his position in the world. All of Ty’s work blends both accessibility and humor with formal presentation and often explores deeper social commentary. As a queer artist and practicing drag queen, Ty’s work often reflects his experiences in the queer community and the idea of subverting boundaries. He enjoys taking everyday objects and subverting their position and function to create often labor-intensive sculptures that imbue mundane objects with personality and tension.
Since moving to London to pursue his MFA in sculpture at the Slade, Locke began making work that is more consciously and directly about his upbringing in Kent. As an artist, Ty’s practice is a way of making sense of the world, almost becoming a form of therapy through the process of making. These more personal sculptures carry a weight to them, and their pleasing and humorous presentation is juxtaposed with the emotional depth of the topics they explore.
Recent solo and group projects include: Fragment I, Commune, Vienna (Austria, current); Wonderland, FILET, London (2024); Kitchen Sink Drama at Copperfield, London (2023); Amber Room, Matt's Gallery, London (2023); Unfurnished, Bomb Factory, London (2023). His work is held in the collections of LAM Museum, the Netherlands; Ingar Dragset, Norway; Maarten Baas, the Netherlands; S. Davíðsdóttir, UK.
Obnoxus Cabanara, 2024
Customised ball point pens
25 x 46 x 3 cm
Ty Locke uses the voice-to-text feature on his phone when a word is misspelled so badly that not even spell check can help. His mind also makes connections and associations that other peoples do not, and his focus when making is extreme. In compiling a chronological list of all the dictated spelling errors he was drawn to thinking about the first nemesis of many dyslexics – the pen itself, that instrument of school room torture. Here the tables have turned and in turn it is the pen not the person that must contort to fit, in a dark twist on the art markets long standing love affair with neon and normative spelling.
Ty Locke
Ty Locke's work draws inspiration from a multitude of sources, responding to his position in the world. All of Ty’s work blends both accessibility and humor with formal presentation and often explores deeper social commentary. As a queer artist and practicing drag queen, Ty’s work often reflects his experiences in the queer community and the idea of subverting boundaries. He enjoys taking everyday objects and subverting their position and function to create often labor-intensive sculptures that imbue mundane objects with personality and tension.
Since moving to London to pursue his MFA in sculpture at the Slade, Locke began making work that is more consciously and directly about his upbringing in Kent. As an artist, Ty’s practice is a way of making sense of the world, almost becoming a form of therapy through the process of making. These more personal sculptures carry a weight to them, and their pleasing and humorous presentation is juxtaposed with the emotional depth of the topics they explore.
Recent solo and group projects include: Fragment I, Commune, Vienna (Austria, current); Wonderland, FILET, London (2024); Kitchen Sink Drama at Copperfield, London (2023); Amber Room, Matt's Gallery, London (2023); Unfurnished, Bomb Factory, London (2023). His work is held in the collections of LAM Museum, the Netherlands; Ingar Dragset, Norway; Maarten Baas, the Netherlands; S. Davíðsdóttir, UK.
Alberta Whittle
A wiggle in the universe: Cassiopeia, 2021
Edition of 3 plus 2 artist's proof
Five bronze tongues, life sized
(Courtesy of the Modern Institute)
Exhibited edition: AP 1. Thanks to the collection of S. Davíðsdóttir for the exhibition loan
To poke one’s tongue out can simultaneously be construed as a gesture of distaste, mockery, lust but also a cipher speaking of spoken language - both forgotten and remembered.
The ‘Wiggle in the Universe' series invites us to remember how indigenous ontologies of marking time have been lost through empire building, and how the severing of language becomes another form of dislocation. What is at stake here is the formalised systems such as definitive spelling, language, grammar and time keeping that have grown within the progress of ‘civilisation’. The idea that no matter how illogical many of these rules are, that they should replace all others. For neurodivergent people many of these concepts can be simply so nonsensical that for them they barely exist or become a cause of anxiety. Meanwhile the acute verbal reasoning and emotional sensitivity of some who cannot spell or keep time can leave them unusually adept in performative and persuasive spheres when freed from spelling by the voice. Thanks to assistive technologies developed within our lifetimes, these heightened skills that were for many generations undermined by the formal challenges of timekeeping and grammatical expectations, can now be left to thrive.
Alberta Whittle
Alberta Whittle is an artist, researcher and curator. She was chosen for the Margaret Tait Award for 2018/9, the Turner Prize 2020 bursary, the Henry Moore Foundation artist award 2020 and the Frieze Artist Award 2020.Her creative practice is motivated by the desire to manifest self-compassion and collective care as key methods in battling anti-blackness. Oscillating between cutting humour and sensitive poetics her work ranges across media and across continents.
Recent projects include deep dive (pause) uncoiling memory, Venice Biennale, Scotland Pavilion, Venice (Italy), create dangerously, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One), Edinburgh (UK), and Black Venus, The Museum of the African Diaspora, San Fransisco, California (USA), curated by Aindrea Emelife.
A wiggle in the universe: Cassiopeia, 2021
Edition of 3 plus 2 artist's proof
Five bronze tongues, life sized
(Courtesy of the Modern Institute)
Exhibited edition: AP 1. Thanks to the collection of S. Davíðsdóttir for the exhibition loan
To poke one’s tongue out can simultaneously be construed as a gesture of distaste, mockery, lust but also a cipher speaking of spoken language - both forgotten and remembered.
The ‘Wiggle in the Universe' series invites us to remember how indigenous ontologies of marking time have been lost through empire building, and how the severing of language becomes another form of dislocation. What is at stake here is the formalised systems such as definitive spelling, language, grammar and time keeping that have grown within the progress of ‘civilisation’. The idea that no matter how illogical many of these rules are, that they should replace all others. For neurodivergent people many of these concepts can be simply so nonsensical that for them they barely exist or become a cause of anxiety. Meanwhile the acute verbal reasoning and emotional sensitivity of some who cannot spell or keep time can leave them unusually adept in performative and persuasive spheres when freed from spelling by the voice. Thanks to assistive technologies developed within our lifetimes, these heightened skills that were for many generations undermined by the formal challenges of timekeeping and grammatical expectations, can now be left to thrive.
Alberta Whittle
Alberta Whittle is an artist, researcher and curator. She was chosen for the Margaret Tait Award for 2018/9, the Turner Prize 2020 bursary, the Henry Moore Foundation artist award 2020 and the Frieze Artist Award 2020.Her creative practice is motivated by the desire to manifest self-compassion and collective care as key methods in battling anti-blackness. Oscillating between cutting humour and sensitive poetics her work ranges across media and across continents.
Recent projects include deep dive (pause) uncoiling memory, Venice Biennale, Scotland Pavilion, Venice (Italy), create dangerously, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One), Edinburgh (UK), and Black Venus, The Museum of the African Diaspora, San Fransisco, California (USA), curated by Aindrea Emelife.
Rebeca Romero
The restless one, 2024
Edition of 1 plus 1 artist's proof
Bronze Composite HTPLA, patina
50 x 20 x 25 cm
Rebeca Romero has often explored the elasticity of time in her work conflating ancient artifacts with potential futures. Perception of time and time management are a major talking point for neurodivergent people, but this tends to focus on the negative. A different understanding of time often results in periods of exceptionally high productivity, and where difficulties occur, coping mechanisms often see off any negative outcomes for others. The mental and physical gymnastics required for this can be significant, which Romero distills into her own projected archetype, building on historic contortionist figures that pre-Columbian South America has left us.
Rebeca Romero
Rebeca Romero's practice spans sculpture, textiles, writing, sound and performance. She creates objects, texts and installations that challenge the dominant historical narrative of the clash between Indigenous and European cultures. Often combining Pre-Columbian iconography with advanced scanning and printing technologies and materials ranging from clay to plastic, her works swing drastically between the past and an alternate future. Online museum archives become an excavation ground for the collection of data, that she later recontextualizes, reassembles and re-presents. With a focus on new materialities, processes of production and collaboration between artist and machine, her work seeks to question ideas and practices of representation, appropriation and authorship.
Romero received an MFA in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths College, University of London (2020), and she is a recipient of the Arts Council of England ‘Develop Your Creative Practice’ grant (2021).
Romero has recently been awarded the OGR Prize 2023 for her work Semilla SAGRADA. The work has been acquired by Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT, remaining on loan to OGR Torino in its physical and digital versions. Other recent acquisitions include KADIST Collection and S. Davíðsdóttir.
Recent projects include Holding Cosmic Dust, Corinium Museum, Cirencester (UL); Kenophobic Pantomimes, Below Grand, New York (USA); south open, OHSH Projects, London (UK), and her inclusion in the Phaidon publication 'Latin American Artists: From 1785 to Now' (2023).
The restless one, 2024
Edition of 1 plus 1 artist's proof
Bronze Composite HTPLA, patina
50 x 20 x 25 cm
Rebeca Romero has often explored the elasticity of time in her work conflating ancient artifacts with potential futures. Perception of time and time management are a major talking point for neurodivergent people, but this tends to focus on the negative. A different understanding of time often results in periods of exceptionally high productivity, and where difficulties occur, coping mechanisms often see off any negative outcomes for others. The mental and physical gymnastics required for this can be significant, which Romero distills into her own projected archetype, building on historic contortionist figures that pre-Columbian South America has left us.
Rebeca Romero
Rebeca Romero's practice spans sculpture, textiles, writing, sound and performance. She creates objects, texts and installations that challenge the dominant historical narrative of the clash between Indigenous and European cultures. Often combining Pre-Columbian iconography with advanced scanning and printing technologies and materials ranging from clay to plastic, her works swing drastically between the past and an alternate future. Online museum archives become an excavation ground for the collection of data, that she later recontextualizes, reassembles and re-presents. With a focus on new materialities, processes of production and collaboration between artist and machine, her work seeks to question ideas and practices of representation, appropriation and authorship.
Romero received an MFA in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths College, University of London (2020), and she is a recipient of the Arts Council of England ‘Develop Your Creative Practice’ grant (2021).
Romero has recently been awarded the OGR Prize 2023 for her work Semilla SAGRADA. The work has been acquired by Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT, remaining on loan to OGR Torino in its physical and digital versions. Other recent acquisitions include KADIST Collection and S. Davíðsdóttir.
Recent projects include Holding Cosmic Dust, Corinium Museum, Cirencester (UL); Kenophobic Pantomimes, Below Grand, New York (USA); south open, OHSH Projects, London (UK), and her inclusion in the Phaidon publication 'Latin American Artists: From 1785 to Now' (2023).
Lucas Dupuy
South Circular, 2023
Acrylic and Gouache on Hessian
170 x 90 cm
Into, 2023
Acrylic and Gouache on Hessian
170 x 90 cm
The diptych formed by the pairing of South Circular and Into forms a visual analogy of amorphic characters that cuts two ways. Dyslexia often comes with a high sensitivity to the malleability of spoken language and its effect, but for many it also impacts the visual perception of the written word. For some reading is slow and keeping place on the page is challenging, but for others like Lucas the words even appear to dance or shift on the page or screen in front of them. Since what is ultimately at stake here is language and communication, it is perhaps curious that a dyslexic mind can be so negatively impacted by the written word, yet often so gifted in speech, persuasion and verbal reasoning – “gift of the gab”.
Lucas Dupuy
Lucas Dupuy (b. 1992) is an artist living and working in London. Recent exhibitions include: Unison, Incubator, London (2023), Search Party, Tatjana Pieters Gallery, Gent, Belgium (2023), Its An Endless World!, Parcel, Tokyo (2023), Formless Anxiety, Tick-Tack, Antwerp (2023).
"Dupuy’s artworks are imbued with a subtle sentimentality and energetic anxiety, taking cues from architecture, technological advancement, popular culture, language systems, and both the often overlooked beauty and time-honoured tension that arise as man attempts to coexist alongside nature. Fleeting, fizzing forms appear to race across each expanse of canvas, entering and exiting the picture plane in a heady haze. Evidently abstract, yet rooted in an emotional observation of physical space and an empathetic exploration of our immediate surroundings."
Written by Hector Campbell
South Circular, 2023
Acrylic and Gouache on Hessian
170 x 90 cm
Into, 2023
Acrylic and Gouache on Hessian
170 x 90 cm
The diptych formed by the pairing of South Circular and Into forms a visual analogy of amorphic characters that cuts two ways. Dyslexia often comes with a high sensitivity to the malleability of spoken language and its effect, but for many it also impacts the visual perception of the written word. For some reading is slow and keeping place on the page is challenging, but for others like Lucas the words even appear to dance or shift on the page or screen in front of them. Since what is ultimately at stake here is language and communication, it is perhaps curious that a dyslexic mind can be so negatively impacted by the written word, yet often so gifted in speech, persuasion and verbal reasoning – “gift of the gab”.
Lucas Dupuy
Lucas Dupuy (b. 1992) is an artist living and working in London. Recent exhibitions include: Unison, Incubator, London (2023), Search Party, Tatjana Pieters Gallery, Gent, Belgium (2023), Its An Endless World!, Parcel, Tokyo (2023), Formless Anxiety, Tick-Tack, Antwerp (2023).
"Dupuy’s artworks are imbued with a subtle sentimentality and energetic anxiety, taking cues from architecture, technological advancement, popular culture, language systems, and both the often overlooked beauty and time-honoured tension that arise as man attempts to coexist alongside nature. Fleeting, fizzing forms appear to race across each expanse of canvas, entering and exiting the picture plane in a heady haze. Evidently abstract, yet rooted in an emotional observation of physical space and an empathetic exploration of our immediate surroundings."
Written by Hector Campbell
Narges Mohammadi
The Inside, 2016, 2021
Edition of 3 plus 1 artist's proof
Video. Performance recorded by Y. Zijp at ‘In Your Touch, I Remain’, 2021, Omstand, Arnhem.
2hrs 5mins
In one of her earliest works, "The Inside" (2016, 2021), Narges Mohammadi covers herself in chocolate and consumes kilograms of it from her own body's surface in a gruelling two-hour performance. During her first year at the academy, her prevailing eating disorder and undiagnosed ADHD pushed her to a point where the work became brutally honest but also destructive to her short-term health. She stretched herself too far in attempting to fully understand the impact of performance art. Inspired by the saying "Eat some chocolate for your menstrual pain," Mohammadi aimed to grasp the societal impositions on women's health and the rigid beauty standards they face by subjecting herself to such a violent act of gluttony. From this experience, she has learned to better mitigate against such extremes while maintaining a focus and intensity in her work that has significantly propelled her young career. While subsequent works explore themes of forced migration, loss of childhood, and assimilation into a predominantly white and patriarchal society, it is in this early performance that these themes are rendered most visceral.
Narges Mohammadi
The work of Narges Mohammadi is rooted in her personal history, caught between two very different cultures, their histories, and her direct experience of forced transference from one to another as a child. Half buried memories translate into immersive installations and sculptures that are characterised by a play of fragrances, colours, symbols, and traditions of differing cultural heritages. Through the use of simple and widely accessible materials like halva and loam, in shapes and forms that have seemingly outgrown their origins, she creates sensorial experiences that enact a feeling of domesticity and home, telling stories of belonging, togetherness, loss and mourning. In their monumentality, they offer space to contemplate and pause. Putting halt to the rapidness of the everyday, she attempts to honour the untold stories, lost histories and forgotten memories of diasporic identities like her own.
Mohammadi graduated from the BA Modern and Contemporary Art History from Utrecht University in 2018 and completed her BA Fine Arts at the Royal Academy of Arts The Hague in 2020.
Recent solo exhibitions include Invisible Hands at Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (NL), The kite that never flew at Museum Beelden aan Zee (NL), and In the Shadow of the Sun at Hotel Maria Kapel, Hoorn (NL). She has recently been awarded the Volkskrant Beeldende Kunst Prize, on view at Stedelijk, Schiedam, Netherlands until 23 June 2024.
Recent group exhibitions include Buro Stedelijk, Amsterdam (NL), TENT, Rotterdam (NL), Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague (NL), Kunstverein Wagenhalle, Stuttgart (DE), Museum Het Valkhof, Nijmegen (NL), CODA Museum, Apeldoorn (NL) and Het Noord-Brabants Museum, Den Bosch (NL).
The Inside, 2016, 2021
Edition of 3 plus 1 artist's proof
Video. Performance recorded by Y. Zijp at ‘In Your Touch, I Remain’, 2021, Omstand, Arnhem.
2hrs 5mins
In one of her earliest works, "The Inside" (2016, 2021), Narges Mohammadi covers herself in chocolate and consumes kilograms of it from her own body's surface in a gruelling two-hour performance. During her first year at the academy, her prevailing eating disorder and undiagnosed ADHD pushed her to a point where the work became brutally honest but also destructive to her short-term health. She stretched herself too far in attempting to fully understand the impact of performance art. Inspired by the saying "Eat some chocolate for your menstrual pain," Mohammadi aimed to grasp the societal impositions on women's health and the rigid beauty standards they face by subjecting herself to such a violent act of gluttony. From this experience, she has learned to better mitigate against such extremes while maintaining a focus and intensity in her work that has significantly propelled her young career. While subsequent works explore themes of forced migration, loss of childhood, and assimilation into a predominantly white and patriarchal society, it is in this early performance that these themes are rendered most visceral.
Narges Mohammadi
The work of Narges Mohammadi is rooted in her personal history, caught between two very different cultures, their histories, and her direct experience of forced transference from one to another as a child. Half buried memories translate into immersive installations and sculptures that are characterised by a play of fragrances, colours, symbols, and traditions of differing cultural heritages. Through the use of simple and widely accessible materials like halva and loam, in shapes and forms that have seemingly outgrown their origins, she creates sensorial experiences that enact a feeling of domesticity and home, telling stories of belonging, togetherness, loss and mourning. In their monumentality, they offer space to contemplate and pause. Putting halt to the rapidness of the everyday, she attempts to honour the untold stories, lost histories and forgotten memories of diasporic identities like her own.
Mohammadi graduated from the BA Modern and Contemporary Art History from Utrecht University in 2018 and completed her BA Fine Arts at the Royal Academy of Arts The Hague in 2020.
Recent solo exhibitions include Invisible Hands at Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (NL), The kite that never flew at Museum Beelden aan Zee (NL), and In the Shadow of the Sun at Hotel Maria Kapel, Hoorn (NL). She has recently been awarded the Volkskrant Beeldende Kunst Prize, on view at Stedelijk, Schiedam, Netherlands until 23 June 2024.
Recent group exhibitions include Buro Stedelijk, Amsterdam (NL), TENT, Rotterdam (NL), Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague (NL), Kunstverein Wagenhalle, Stuttgart (DE), Museum Het Valkhof, Nijmegen (NL), CODA Museum, Apeldoorn (NL) and Het Noord-Brabants Museum, Den Bosch (NL).
Elsa James
Work No. 42: However, I Can, 2024
Screenprint on plywood
One panel at 30 x 30 cm
(provisional image)
The diptych paintings reveal the shame and trauma that James, as an individual with dyslexia, has lived with. The shame has been so deeply ingrained that it made it challenging for her to create the smaller painting that acknowledges some of her strengths. This is a common tendency among people with dyslexia. Notably, James has crafted all the text in these paintings without the aid of predictive text, voice-to-text, auto-correction or Grammarly for professionals.
The work forms part of ‘The Blackness Series’, an ongoing series of numbered text works commencing in 2016, documenting historical and contemporary Black lived experiences alongside broader critical social commentary. The font is typically black typefaced on a black background, making the works intentionally arduous to read. Through this technique, they accentuate how Black communities are held in the tension between hypervisibility and invisibility in our fractured world.
Works from this series are also held in the Government Art Collection and the collection of Melanie Keen.
Elsa James
Elsa James is a British African-Caribbean artist and activist who lives and works in Essex, England. She works across live performance, film, print, spoken word, neon, and sound. Recent solo performances include the National Maritime Museum, London (2024) and Tate Britain, London (2023). She has had solo screenings and exhibitions at the Museum of London Docklands, London (2023); Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea (2022); Firstsite, Colchester (2019) and Metal, Southend-on-Sea (2018); and her work has been included in group exhibitions for Hayward Gallery Touring at the Arnolfini, Bristol, Midlands Art Centre (MAC), Birmingham, Millennium Gallery, Sheffield and Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA), Dundee (2024-25); Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Canada (2024), Gagosian, London (2023); Unit London, London (2023); Art Exchange, Colchester (2023); TJ Boulting, London (2022) and South London Gallery, London (2022). Elsa's work is held in the UK Government Art Collection and Beecroft Art Gallery, Southend-on-Sea. She was a finalist for the Freelands Award in 2021 and a nominated recipient of a Henry Moore Foundation Artists Award in 2023.
Work No. 42: However, I Can, 2024
Screenprint on plywood
One panel at 30 x 30 cm
(provisional image)
The diptych paintings reveal the shame and trauma that James, as an individual with dyslexia, has lived with. The shame has been so deeply ingrained that it made it challenging for her to create the smaller painting that acknowledges some of her strengths. This is a common tendency among people with dyslexia. Notably, James has crafted all the text in these paintings without the aid of predictive text, voice-to-text, auto-correction or Grammarly for professionals.
The work forms part of ‘The Blackness Series’, an ongoing series of numbered text works commencing in 2016, documenting historical and contemporary Black lived experiences alongside broader critical social commentary. The font is typically black typefaced on a black background, making the works intentionally arduous to read. Through this technique, they accentuate how Black communities are held in the tension between hypervisibility and invisibility in our fractured world.
Works from this series are also held in the Government Art Collection and the collection of Melanie Keen.
Elsa James
Elsa James is a British African-Caribbean artist and activist who lives and works in Essex, England. She works across live performance, film, print, spoken word, neon, and sound. Recent solo performances include the National Maritime Museum, London (2024) and Tate Britain, London (2023). She has had solo screenings and exhibitions at the Museum of London Docklands, London (2023); Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea (2022); Firstsite, Colchester (2019) and Metal, Southend-on-Sea (2018); and her work has been included in group exhibitions for Hayward Gallery Touring at the Arnolfini, Bristol, Midlands Art Centre (MAC), Birmingham, Millennium Gallery, Sheffield and Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA), Dundee (2024-25); Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Canada (2024), Gagosian, London (2023); Unit London, London (2023); Art Exchange, Colchester (2023); TJ Boulting, London (2022) and South London Gallery, London (2022). Elsa's work is held in the UK Government Art Collection and Beecroft Art Gallery, Southend-on-Sea. She was a finalist for the Freelands Award in 2021 and a nominated recipient of a Henry Moore Foundation Artists Award in 2023.
Gabby R
Withered Falcon, 2021
Mixed media
21 x 10 x 20 cm
Previously exhibited at The Turner Prize 2021.
Gabby R
Gabby R is a prolific maker whose work demonstrates mastery of less conventional materials including hot glue, pipe cleaners and found objects. Through the assemblage of these basic components, Gabby creates vividly imagined characters that mimic or embellish creatures found in the natural world. Alongside her three-dimensional work, Gabby uses collage, drawing and painting to document the creatures she creates and their unique features and qualities.
Recent exhibitions include: Residential, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, travelling to Copenhagen Contemporary, 2024, Lucy, Jack, Gabby, Phoenix Art Space, 2023, Turner Prize 2021 Exhibition, Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry, 2022, Illuminating the Wilderness, screened at MK Gallery, Tate Liverpool and Museum of Modern Art in Sydney, 2019. Gabby was awarded Silver from Arts Award.
Withered Falcon, 2021
Mixed media
21 x 10 x 20 cm
Previously exhibited at The Turner Prize 2021.
Gabby R
Gabby R is a prolific maker whose work demonstrates mastery of less conventional materials including hot glue, pipe cleaners and found objects. Through the assemblage of these basic components, Gabby creates vividly imagined characters that mimic or embellish creatures found in the natural world. Alongside her three-dimensional work, Gabby uses collage, drawing and painting to document the creatures she creates and their unique features and qualities.
Recent exhibitions include: Residential, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, travelling to Copenhagen Contemporary, 2024, Lucy, Jack, Gabby, Phoenix Art Space, 2023, Turner Prize 2021 Exhibition, Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry, 2022, Illuminating the Wilderness, screened at MK Gallery, Tate Liverpool and Museum of Modern Art in Sydney, 2019. Gabby was awarded Silver from Arts Award.
El Bass
Untitled, 2022
Ink and acrylic on canvas
61 x 61 cm
El Bass
El Bass has been an artist at the Project Art Works studio since 2017. El Bass is interested in sound and creates paintings using the bass vibrations from speakers.
“From this practice he has created an alter ego called El Bass. El Bass has a fascination with Bluetooth speakers, this allows him to be remotely in control of sound. Hearing the sound is one way to feel but El Bass engages four of his senses. By placing a surface over the speaker, the surface vibrates and we can see the sound waves. Adding ink to the surface allows us to see the sound waves in more detail and it leaves a mark. Plus, the ink has a certain smell that El Bass likes. When working with lower frequencies you can feel the sound, the louder it goes the more pleased El Bass is.”
Written by Associate Artist, Tom Lepora.
Untitled, 2022
Ink and acrylic on canvas
61 x 61 cm
El Bass
El Bass has been an artist at the Project Art Works studio since 2017. El Bass is interested in sound and creates paintings using the bass vibrations from speakers.
“From this practice he has created an alter ego called El Bass. El Bass has a fascination with Bluetooth speakers, this allows him to be remotely in control of sound. Hearing the sound is one way to feel but El Bass engages four of his senses. By placing a surface over the speaker, the surface vibrates and we can see the sound waves. Adding ink to the surface allows us to see the sound waves in more detail and it leaves a mark. Plus, the ink has a certain smell that El Bass likes. When working with lower frequencies you can feel the sound, the louder it goes the more pleased El Bass is.”
Written by Associate Artist, Tom Lepora.
Larry Achiampong
A Letter (Side B), 2023
Edition of 4 plus 1 artist's proof
4K Video, 20 mins
Not least because of the pressures of trying to fit in a ‘one size fits all’ world, neurodivergence has a strong relationship to depression and anxiety. While this does not affect everyone it would be wrong in an exhibition like this to only present the creative upsides. Larry Achiampong’s 'A Letter (Side B)' looks at the affective impact of history, immigration and geographical separation on two brothers living in Britain and Ghana, processing the imprints of depression, inherited trauma, digital anxiety and Black Masculinity.
Larry Achiampong
Drawing on his Ghanaian roots, Larry Achiampong's solo and collaborative projects employ imagery, aural and visual archives, live performance and sound to explore ideas surrounding class, cross-cultural and post-digital identity. With the expansion and sharing of information via the Internet, the idea of a one- size-fits-all version of history, as previously dictated, continues to be eradicated. Achiampong crate-digs the vaults of history, and splices audible and visual qualities of the personal and interpersonal archives offering multiple positions revealing the socio-political contradictions in contemporary society. Achiampong’s works examine his communal and personal heritage - in particular, the intersection between pop culture and the postcolonial position, using performance to investigate ‘the self’ as a fiction, devising alter-egos to point at divided selves.
Recent projects include: Sculpture in the Park, Compton Verney (UK, 2024-2027), A Letter, A Pledge, Stanley Picker Gallery, London (UK, 2024), Manifesta 14, Prishtina (Kosovo, 2023), soft and weak like water, 14th Gwangju Biennale (South Korea, 2023), Wayfinder, a travelling exhibition at Turner Contemporary, MK Gallery and BALTIC (UK, 2022-2023) and Sixty Years: The Unfinished Conversation, Tate Britain, London (UK, 2021).
His work is held in collections internationally, including Tate (UK), The Line, Royal Docks, London (UK), The British Council Collection (UK), The Government Art Collection (UK), Arts Council England (UK), The Sindika Dokolo Foundation, Luanda (Angola), FRAC Bretagne, Rennes (France), Servais Family Collection, Brussels (Belgium).
A Letter (Side B), 2023
Edition of 4 plus 1 artist's proof
4K Video, 20 mins
Not least because of the pressures of trying to fit in a ‘one size fits all’ world, neurodivergence has a strong relationship to depression and anxiety. While this does not affect everyone it would be wrong in an exhibition like this to only present the creative upsides. Larry Achiampong’s 'A Letter (Side B)' looks at the affective impact of history, immigration and geographical separation on two brothers living in Britain and Ghana, processing the imprints of depression, inherited trauma, digital anxiety and Black Masculinity.
Larry Achiampong
Drawing on his Ghanaian roots, Larry Achiampong's solo and collaborative projects employ imagery, aural and visual archives, live performance and sound to explore ideas surrounding class, cross-cultural and post-digital identity. With the expansion and sharing of information via the Internet, the idea of a one- size-fits-all version of history, as previously dictated, continues to be eradicated. Achiampong crate-digs the vaults of history, and splices audible and visual qualities of the personal and interpersonal archives offering multiple positions revealing the socio-political contradictions in contemporary society. Achiampong’s works examine his communal and personal heritage - in particular, the intersection between pop culture and the postcolonial position, using performance to investigate ‘the self’ as a fiction, devising alter-egos to point at divided selves.
Recent projects include: Sculpture in the Park, Compton Verney (UK, 2024-2027), A Letter, A Pledge, Stanley Picker Gallery, London (UK, 2024), Manifesta 14, Prishtina (Kosovo, 2023), soft and weak like water, 14th Gwangju Biennale (South Korea, 2023), Wayfinder, a travelling exhibition at Turner Contemporary, MK Gallery and BALTIC (UK, 2022-2023) and Sixty Years: The Unfinished Conversation, Tate Britain, London (UK, 2021).
His work is held in collections internationally, including Tate (UK), The Line, Royal Docks, London (UK), The British Council Collection (UK), The Government Art Collection (UK), Arts Council England (UK), The Sindika Dokolo Foundation, Luanda (Angola), FRAC Bretagne, Rennes (France), Servais Family Collection, Brussels (Belgium).