Performance

Called to Respond | Shenece Oretha

23 Jul 2020 – 23 Aug 2020

Regular hours

Monday
Closed
Tuesday
10:00 – 18:00
Wednesday
10:00 – 18:00
Thursday
10:00 – 18:00
Friday
10:00 – 18:00
Saturday
10:00 – 18:00
Sunday
10:00 – 18:00

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Cell Project Space

London, United Kingdom

Address

Travel Information

  • bus lines: 26, 48, 55, 106, 236, 254, 277, 388
  • Bethnal Green station
  • Cambridge Heath Road station
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Cell Project Space presents a new commission by London-based multidisciplinary artist Shenece Oretha, the second in a series of projects as part of Cellular, an experimental Live Art and Media-based programme.

About

The  call  - 

to all holding breath 

hear  feeling  beneath  fingers

as  breath  becomes  beat

catching   in  the  open  ear

conspiring  through  bones 

moving us   to respond   together...

Cell Project Space presents a new commission by London-based multidisciplinary artist Shenece Oretha, the second in a series of projects as part of Cellular, an experimental Live Art and Media-based programme. Oretha produces multi-channel sound installations that dovetail between performance, text and sculpture to shape moments of communion that transcend physical form. 

Produced during a two-month period of isolated residency at the gallery, Oretha presents the first iteration of her two-part project: an interactive holding and breathing space on the homepage of Cell’s website. Incorporating words, sound and moving image, this online participatory performance is underpinned by the liminality of our current reality. In the context of a moment of shift, one that is suspended between acts of distance and proximity, the artist calls us to touch and to test the sonic potential of technological frequency against the embodied effects of percussive sound.

By way of navigating and hovering over the responsive surface, the visitor activates breath. A subwoofer inhales and exhales, expanding and contracting, provoking a rattling of bones. Words appear and dissolve as they perform an improvisational chorus; inciting breath through rumble and sighs that emanate as signals of the artist’s summoning to listen in a more affective register. Transforming these surfaces into percussive instruments, Oretha’s new work builds on the mobilising effects of Black oral traditions, which celebrate the exchange and participation of intimate actions to generate expressions of collective imagination.

Shenece Oretha’s first solo exhibition, TESTING GROUND, curated by Taylor Le Melle, was presented at Not/Nowhere and Cafe Oto, London (2019). Group exhibitions include 'Cinders, Sinuous and Supple', curated by Deborah Joyce Holman, Lausanne Les Urbaines, Switzerland (2019); 'PRAISE N PAY IT/ PULL UP, COME INTO THE RISE', South London Gallery, London; and 'BBZBLKBK: Alternative Grad Show', Copeland (both 2018). Presentations of performance work include 'Towards a black testimony', Stroom Den Haag curated by Languid Hands (2019); Wysing Polyphonic Festival, Wysing Art Centre, Cambridge (2018);'Congregation' and 'NON EXCHANGE: General Assembly' ICA, London, (2017).

Launched in June 2020, Cellular is a new experimental Live Art and Media-based programme comprising a multi-purpose ground floor event space at Cell Project Space and an online platform on Cell’s website. Originally conceived to run alongside the exhibitions programme at the gallery, Cellular launches six pilot commissions of on-site and digital works to be delivered with and without physical audiences between June - December 2020. To find out more, please click here.

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