Offsite: Summer 2013
Edward Thomasson: Between You and Me
Saturday 6 July, 3:30, 5:30 & 7:30pm
The Glasshouse Community Centre
161 Old Ford Road
London, E2 9QB
Cara Tolmie: Otiumfold
Saturday 27 July, 5–8pm
Victoria Park – eastern Hub
London, E9 5DU
Chisenhale Gallery
64 Chisenhale Road
London E3 5QZ
Chisenhale Gallery presents two new Offsite commissions with emerging London-based artists, taking place in our east London neighbourhood this summer. Edward Thomasson and Cara Tolmie have both developed performance projects with people who live or work near the gallery—exploring collaborative improvisation, multi-layered narratives and public space. Both projects have been developed during residencies over a period of time, supporting the production of new work outside the gallery space.
Between You And Me, a new play by Edward Thomasson with music by Soosan Lolavar, premieres at The Glass House, a bespoke design 1950s community centre in the Parkview Estate near Victoria Park. Developed by Thomasson with non-professional performers from east London, the play looks at how stories are told, modified and retold in order to process the events we experience around us. Set in a class at a local community centre, the action centres on a group of participants as they attempt to understand a mysterious act of seemingly unprovoked vandalism.
Between You and Me marks the halfway point of Thomasson’s Chisenhale Gallery Create Residency and it forms the basis of a new video work to be presented at Chisenhale Gallery in 2014. Commissioned in partnership with Create London, a creative agency delivering projects in east London, involving artists and local communities.
Otiumfold, a site-specific performance by Cara Tolmie, takes place in the recently renovated eastern side of Victoria Park. Tolmie will perform alongside a group of participants who have collaborated with her during the residency. Together they will carry out a series of choreographed and semi-improvised actions in response to the landscape of the park. These actions are dictated by a unique set of rules the group has devised during workshops and rehearsals in the park over the course of the residency, creating an alternative way to navigate the park and interact with its architecture.
Otiumfold is produced as part of Cara Tolmie’s year-long Chisenhale Gallery Neighbourhood Residency, in partnership with Tower Hamlets Parks and Open Spaces Department.
Offsite is Chisenhale Gallery’s programme of commissions, collaborations and residencies, taking place outside the gallery, in our east London neighbourhood. Previous commissions include Slow Boat with Benedict Drew, a canal barge journey between London and Birmingham; Ruth Ewan’s Dreadnoughts, a series of east London walks; Matthew Noel-Tod’s Bang!, a film screening for dogs; and Amalia Pica’s I am Tower of Hamlets, as I am in Tower of Hamlets, just like a lot of other people are, a sculpture that travelled around east London during the Olympic year.
Edward Thomasson (b. 1985, Stoke-on-Trent) lives and works in London. He works with video, performance and drawing. Recent exhibitions include Coded Conduct, Pilar Corrias, London (2013), Just About Managing, Southard Reid, London (2012); Inside, South London Gallery, part of the Nina Stewart Artist Residency (2011–12); Bloomberg New Contemporaries, The A Foundation, Liverpool and ICA (2010). He is a current participant of the Lux Associate Artists Programme (2012–13).
Cara Tolmie (b. 1984, Glasgow) lives and works in London. She works in performance, film, audio and installation. Recent exhibitions and events include Pley, Spike Island, Bristol (2012); Whitstable Biennale (2012); Her Noise: Feminisms and the Sonic, Tate Modern (2012); A Sensible Stage, Lux/ICA Biennial of Moving Images, London (2012); Frieze Projects, London (2011); Supplement, London (2011) and Dundee Contemporary Arts (2011).
Chisenhale Gallery
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