Genesis Light Magic

About

New works inspired by the historic Church of St John on Bethnal Green, a grade-one listed church designed by Sir John Soane. 

GENESIS. Kristina Pulejkova’s moving image work addresses the science fiction trope of terraforming in reverse. Laura Moreton-Griffiths collages facts and fictions around the Church’s patron, John the Apostle and originator of ‘In the beginning was the Word’. JMC Hayes invokes The Fat Man; naked as the day he was born, a grotesque archetype, symbolic of excess, greed and socially acceptable behaviours. Cleo Broda’s props for social spaces are metaphors about overcoming barriers, made with believable utility and purpose. 

LIGHT. Cecilia Sjoholm’s architectural grids illuminate the barely perceptual to create a subtle interplay of 2D and 3D. Sinéid Codd positions light to fall on an assemblage of objects. Colour wavelengths come into focus, stirring recollections of the past. Anne Krinsky’s photo-based observations made along the Thames, call up a spiritual space where eye and mind travel freely. Soa J Hwang uses light to electronically paint with data collected through sensors that respond to audience presence. Katia Potapova projects film collage about urbanism, architecture and the everyday built environment. Pandora Vaughan visualises systems of control and incarceration as forms of removal from the light. Her needlepoint and sewn objects, elaborate psychological responses to highly ordered spaces. Evy Jokhova considers the hierarchy of space and (self) image, to question the role of architecture and institutional imagery in building and maintaining societal control. 

MAGIC. Alexis Zelda Stevens dramatises the magic of boredom. Her expressive sculptural collages of real and imagined scenarios, talk of the psychology of intimacy and the disconnect between screen and real life. Eva Lis’s works explore the potential of useless things to awaken a quasi shamanic engagement with everyday artefacts and transcendental experience. Marvel at the amazing levitating objects. 

Cleo Broda

Sinéid Codd

JMC Hayes

Soa J Hwang

Evy Jokhova

Anne Krinsky

Eva Lis

Laura Moreton-Griffiths

Katia Potapova

Kristina Pulejkova

Cecilia Sjoholm

Pandora Vaughan

Alexis Zelda Stevens

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St John on Bethnal Green

200 Cambridge Heath Road

Bethnal Green

E2 9PA