Contact Sport: a Season with Millwall Venus

About

Anna Shilonosova is a documentary photographer and a lens-based artist currently living in the East End area of London. One of Anna's artistic interests that spiked after the lengthy London lockdowns is exploring physical contact in its many forms. Another area Anna is drawn to is women in sports. These two areas were combined in Anna's latest project, "Contact Sport". She took photos of a local female rugby team, Millwall Venus, and was their photographer throughout the season of 2021-2022, the first one after the restrictions were lifted. One of the major goals in this project was to highlight the presence of female players in amateur rugby: a topic, which Anna considers important to talk about:

“I spent a season with the Millwall Venus rugby team taking photos of the matches, training sessions and capturing glimpses of the team life off the pitch.

After almost two years of lockdowns, being isolated at home and away from most of my family and friends, I longed for physical contact. Seeing people face to face, interacting with them was a healing and invigorating experience. Therefore, doing a project about a team sport that probably has the most amount of varied physical contact — rugby — seemed an obvious train of thought. Telling a story about a contact sport played by women was another powerful message I wanted to get across. 

I never regretted my decision. Watching those powerful, beautiful humans experience a broad range of emotions; being fierce and ruthless one second, switching to being fragile and caring the other was exactly the contrast I was seeking to capture. I wanted to display it through touch, often opting in for a close-up rather than a wide angle, searching for refrains in the surroundings; capturing quirky and sometimes ironic details of the team’s life. I intentionally stepped away from the standard sports reportage photos you would see in newspapers and on sports-related websites.

In exploring the subject of vulnerability, I started with joining a taster session in July 2021, and went home with a heavily bruised leg as an entry point into the contact sport world. Throughout the season I observed the players' attitude to injuries. In their group chat they often bragged about the bruises and cuts they got with after a match or a training session. I felt that such a spontaneous, organic way to acknowledge one's fragility and their body's resilience needed to find its way into the book. Chat messages about upcoming after-training pub crawls were another snippet of the team's inner life that caught my attention. Thus, having gotten the team's permission, I added a few screenshots to the physical version of the book.

It so happened that all the matches the team played weren’t home matches due to ongoing repair works at their home pitch. To display this, I included a map with locations of all the rugby pitches the players had to travel to. For me it’s a physical proof of how determined the team was to keep going. 

The narrative in the book is open-ended: though the current season is over, the team keeps training for the next one, their inner dynamics ever evolving.”

The result of her work is an artbook and a series of prints that Anna will be talking about in-depth on October, 27. There will be elements of performance during the event. We felt it was important to organise this exhibition in a local pub that has historical connections to the local sports teams, thus giving back to the community and working towards more visibility of amateur sports activities in the area. We aim to amplify the voices of women in rugby and provide space for those who might be interested in exploring this sport.

The event is curated by Anna Nesterenko, a Ukrainian London-based curator, focused on contemporary art and performances. 

Half of the profits from the photobook and prints sale will be donated to Vet Crew – a team of exotic animal veterinarians currently living and working in Odesa, Ukraine.