Epiphany (Temporaire)
This solo exhibition of new work by British-Jamaican artist and member of a-n’s Artists Council Exodus Crooks includes sculpture, film, text and sculptural installation.
Crooks’ practice explores the ways in which memories, histories and traditions are inherited, stored and transferred through time and shared space. The work in ‘Epiphany (Temporaire)’ draws on personal experiences of love, loss and pain, inviting viewers to ‘witness, with reverence, as the artist takes an inward journey, a slow walk home, a look inside’.
Until 17 September 2023, ICF @ Block 336, Brixton, London internationalcuratorsforum.org
Interweaving Spaces
a-n member Gil Mualem-Doron presents this solo exhibition featuring a large-scale, immersive installation that explores ideas of biodiversity and cultural diversity in relation to climate change.
Evoking an ocean kelp forest, over 100 suspended textile strips combine traditional designs from coastal areas around the world that are located near the underwater forests. Viewed through a porthole, short film The Calling, which was filmed underwater, shows a performer portraying a mythical siren. Meanwhile dance film Code Red! Code Red! is projected onto a screen formed of dozens of gauze bandages and explores environmental devastation and the human reaction to it. Code Red! Code Red! will be performed again in October as part of the Black History Month celebration (date TBC, see website for details).
Until 5 November 2023, Worthing Museum & Art Gallery wtm.uk/museum
Out of the Blue: landscapes of chronic illness
a-n member Joanna Holland’s first solo exhibition shares her lived experience of chronic illness, through photographs, video, soundscapes and text made over the last three years.
The artworks presented in ‘Out of the Blue’ contemplate experiences of diagnosis, medication, side effects, chronic fatigue, hospitalisation, and the impact of visible and invisible disability on family life.
The exhibition also investigates an ‘interconnectedness with nature, and the complex entanglements between self, planetary health, climate change and biodiversity loss.’
Until 8 October 2023, Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester attenborougharts.com
Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance
Works by Birmingham-based a-n member Barbara Walker and a-n Board member Keith Piper feature in this exhibition that explores global histories of colonial exploitation, resilience and liberation.
Contemporary artworks appear alongside historical pieces made in West Africa, the Caribbean, South America and Europe, to examine the city of Cambridge and the Fitzwilliam Museum’s roles in the Transatlantic enslavement of African people, and reveal stories of courage, resistance, hope and repair.
Piper’s work Coloureds’ Codex (Enlightenment Edition) critiques the historical and contemporary ways in which skin colour has been used to identify, separate and control people, while Walker’s Vanishing Point series of drawings rework historical portraits, making central Black figures who were previously marginalised.
8 September 2023 – 7 January 2024, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk
Made It: North West Graduate Art Prize
Made It returns to showcase the work of a new group of recent graduates from across north west England, with several a-n members among the 26 artists selected by open call.
Manchester-based artist Kelan Andrews makes sculpture and installation including animatronics, which reflect their lived experience with chronic illness. Immie Ruth Jones also adopts an autobiographical approach, producing ‘tactile embodiments of their internal monologue’ in knit, sculpture and illustration.
Also based in Manchester, Belinda Ann Wong is a portrait and street photographer whilst Amber Gent’s photographic work explores themes of identity and materialism. Leeds-based Guy Parsons is an illustrator, storyteller and book-maker whose work engages with folkloric narratives.
10 awards – including a £200 no-strings-attached grant, a solo show at CASS ART Manchester in 2024 and a-n Artist memberships – will be announced at the exhibition opening.
16 September – 6 October 2023, Royal Standard, Liverpool the-royal-standard.co.uk
Declaration of Independence
This new iteration of London-based artist Barby Asante’s ongoing project Declaration of Independence includes a collaboration with Transport for London (TfL) employees, multi-site visual artworks and a performance at Stratford Underground station.
Declaration of Independence reflects on the everyday impacts of policies and legislations, and by bringing together and working with women and non-binary people of colour, acknowledges how they are often at the forefront of struggles for equity and social justice.
The visual artworks feature photographs Asante found in the London Transport Museum archives, of women of colour at work in different TfL roles, and include those who were employed by London Transport’s direct recruitment in Barbados in 1956.
14 September 2023 – 5 January 2025. Performance: Sunday 17 September 2023, 2pm, Stratford Underground station art.tfl.gov.uk
Cinema Despite
This three-day festival of artists’ moving image features the work of 29 artists, filmmakers and collectives working in Scotland over the last 70 years.
Cinema Despite aims to expand the underexposed history of artists’ moving image practice in Scotland, with a programme organised into five themes: the documentary, imperial legacies, protest, cultural identity, and sexuality.
The festival features work by contemporary artists including Alia Syed, Luke Fowler, Tako Taal and Charlotte Prodger, alongside rarely seen historic material drawn from archives and newly scanned for digital presentation.
1-3 September 2023, Tramway, Glasgow tramway.org
Top image: Gil Mualem-Doron, Code Red! Code Red! dance performance at Interweaving Spaces immersive installation, 2023. Dancer: Lya Abdou Issa AKA BlkDimond. Photo: Gil Mualem-Doron
