Autumn/winter programme 2020-2021

Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings: In My Room
Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings’ first solo institutional exhibition develops the artists’ inquiry into the politics, histories and aesthetics of queer spaces and culture. A new film highlights the impact of gentrification upon the city and its gay communities, whilst also exploring the relationship between masculinity, capitalism and power within the urban landscape. 

Wall rubbings of the stone relief that fronted the recently closed Bar Jester are presented as works on paper in the exhibition alongside a major new fresco painting, depicting a high street populated by pedestrians. At a time of extreme and ongoing austerity, heightened surveillance and the privatisation of public spaces, the street is an increasingly contested and political zone.

Curator: Juliette Desorgues, Curator of Visual Arts, MOSTYN

Commissioned by Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea, In My Room is presented in partnership with Humber Street Gallery, Hull. 

Richard Wathen: New Eyes Every Time
MOSTYN Open 21 “Exhibition Award” winner Richard Wathen’s solo exhibition comprises a new series of paintings. His works subvert the genre of figurative painting through a bold play between figuration and abstraction, between the solid density of the matt surface and the fragility of the figures represented.

Following the cubist concept of a multitude of viewpoints in time, each figure remains in a state of constant flux, beyond the here-and-now. Their age, gender and gestures are left ambiguous, open to an irreversible position of hesitation and insecurity.  

Curator: Alfredo Cramerotti, Director, MOSTYN

Nick Hornby: Zygotes and Confessions
MOSTYN Open 21 “Audience Award” winner Nick Hornby’s first UK solo exhibition comprises a new series of sculptures. Hornby brings high-tech processes to figuration, pulling historical, material forms into the era of screen culture. In this pluralistic approach to perception, neither image nor form takes centre stage. 

Gender and sexual identity are explored by the artist in this new series for the first time. Whilst Hornby’s work has previously resisted autobiographical connotations, here he explores a sense of personal intimacy or “confessions.” 

Curator: Alfredo Cramerotti, Director, MOSTYN

Supported by The Moondance Foundation.

Digital Programme 

QUEER IS NOT A LABEL 
November 23-28, 2020, 6pm GMT

QUEER IS NOT A LABEL is a series of six online performances to be published on MOSTYN’s website and Instagram channels at 6pm (GMT) daily from November 23-28, 2020. 

Initiated and founded in Paris in 2019 by Kévin Blinderman (artist, curator) and Paul-Alexandre Islas (artist, sex worker, DJ), QUEER IS NOT A LABEL is a series of events at the crossroads between art, music and performance that supports and celebrates radical gender-questioning artists.  

This series includes online performances by Noemi, DJ Fingerblast, Nuh Peace, Bunny Intonamorous, Neurokill, and TRISTAN. 

Supported by Fluxus Art Projects.

LUMIN RADIO: LOCAL 37 
December 7, 14 and 21, 2020, 6pm GMT

Local 37, is a three-part radio series developed in collaboration with LUMIN, an artist-run radio and publisher led by Sadia Pineda Hameed and Beau W Beakhouse. The radio series will be broadcast on December 7, 14, and 21 at 6pm GMT and will be hosted on MOSTYN’s website.

Inspired by the Filipino Labour Union founded in the US in 1933, later called “Local 37,” and Carlos Bulosan’s short text “The Writer as Worker,” Local 37 is a fictional underground radio station transmitting dialogue and strategies for the artist as worker at the intersection of creation, transmission, and anti-colonial and working-class collectivism. 

A full line-up of contributors will be announced on MOSTYN’s website shortly.

This project was made possible through funding from the Arts Council of Wales’s National Lottery Fund.