In Correspondence with Moyra Derby and Della Gooden

About

IN CORRESPONDENCE

To be in correspondence is to be in active dialogue over time, with another person. It is most often understood within the context of writing letters, where a mutual need to maintain and nourish an exchange delivers repeated response and counter response on the page. A sense of momentum between two writers might be characterised by asymmetrical flurries of activity and quieter moments when nothing is said.

This particular correspondence began in February 2022 between us: Moyra Derby and Della Gooden. It is an ongoing exchange that will continue up to, and during, the making of an exhibition at RAUMX, London at the end of October 2022. At the time of writing the exhibition is three weeks away. A booklet presents a partial record of the last 7 months, it draws on the occasions when we met in person, zoomed, texted, and emailed.

We noticed very quickly that there is a shared porousness in our practices: an openness to spatial circumstance, to architecture, a mutual sensibility for the positioning of a viewer/participant and an understanding of the duration of experience. Consequently, we also knew that we would not be taking completed works ready to hang for the exhibition. Instead, elements would need to be open to being resolved in the space, as a physical and visual continuance of our exchange; a series of moves and counter moves, back and forth between our two practices.