Gallery 31: Swimmers Limb

About

Guest curated by Taylor LeMelle, the exhibition features contributions from two Somerset House Studios artists: Turner Prize winner Tai Shani and design studio COMUZI Lab, as well as a new site-specific commission from artist Mani Kambo who was selected via open call. 
 

For the first time at Gallery 31, this will be an exhibition where the curator presents no theme but sets off from the starting point of finding pleasure in creative work. LeMelle invited the artists to speculate on a series of prompts centered around a theoretical intervention on Somerset House’s surroundings – the space in between Victoria Embankment Gardens; a green thoroughfare flanking each side of the site along the River Thames. These prompts included questioning the implications of connecting these surroundings, looking at the change to the air quality, who might be the workers to execute this alteration and what would be the imagined worker's needs. 

The title Swimmers Limb surfaced as a way to encompass the societal impulse to imagine new futures while still beholden to old habits. The dialogues included how city dwellers prepare for rising waters, the examination of artefacts that peek out of the riverbank during low tide and how we try to swim forward in time as laws and policies attempt to drag us backwards. LeMelle’s curatorial focus is on connecting with their own intuition, and the idea of new possibilities revealing themselves once we shift our collective focus onto regeneration.

Artist Tai Shani is a self-taught world builder who creates new mythologies working across many mediums including film, sculpture, installation, live performance and text. In Swimmers Limb she shares watercolours from her latest series The Neon Hieroglyph where nine hypnotic stories form feminist mythology of psychedelics. For Shani, the psychedelic is a space that can drive new visions of society.

Design studio COMUZI Lab strives to cultivate the imagination for building a better world. Their current focus is on digital healthcare services and learning to be intentional about what care is given, asking whether your way of life has affected your capacity for intimacy. Working on this exhibition from the design studio are Yaa Addae and Safiya McKenzie. In Swimmers Limb they call for contributions to their budding research on love and wellbeing.

Artist Mani Kambo works with symbols and iconography. In a freestyling manner, she assembles patterns and complex shapes into textile and print works. Tapping into her own ‘gut reactions’, she is teaching herself about human cells, underground communication networks, living off the land, hallucinations, rituals, and the transformative power of fire and the cleansing power of water. For the exhibition, Mani has responded to Tai’s wall work with an immersive wallpaper design.
 

LeMelle’s curatorial approach is not thematic but rather makes exhibitions based on a set of guiding questions. Such as: 
Pleasure: In this economy how can you afford to spend time doing what you do not like?
The Whole Self: What might be restored within you when you decide to bring your whole self to work? Exhibition-As-Research: What if shows are a place where a curator´s ideas are not presented, but found?

On 3 October, there will be a curator's talk with Taylor LeMelle about this exhibition and on 27 October, COMUZI Lab will host a workshop focused on restorative love economics as part of Grounding Practice.

Supported by The Foyle Foundation.