Exhibition

Melissa Gordon: Collision

4 Oct 2018

Event times

5.30pm and 7pm

Cost of entry

Admission free

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Swiss Church in London

London, United Kingdom

Address

Travel Information

  • Covent Garden
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A re-staging of British feminist writer and playwright Mina Loy's 1916 play, Collision.

About

In 1916, the British artist, playwright and actress Mina Loy wrote a one-page play entitled Collision—an innovative piece of writing, composed mainly of stage directions, describing the transformation of an interior by a machine and a single character known simply as “Man". The play is significant as it is, as academic Julie Schmid writes in her essay Mina Loy’s Futurist Theatre (1996), “one of the only feminist responses to and re-workings of the futurist dramatic aesthetic”. However, while Loy enjoyed relative recognition in her lifetime, she has largely been overlooked by the mainstream artistic canon until recently.
 
Melissa Gordon’s enactments of Collision are the first known stagings of Loy’s play. The first performance was during the exhibition Fallible Space, at the Bluecoat, Liverpool in 2016 on Collision’s centenary. At the Swiss Church, Gordon will work with the same group of corporeal mimes to manipulate a set she has designed, built and painted, which assembles itself into a large abstract painting. The mimes physically construct the painting with their own gestures, pulling, lifting and pushing to arrange prop-like gestural forms Gordon has fabricated. For Gordon, Loy’s play is a feminist imagining of modern space from 1916: a kinetic zone where bodies and objects are props in an unstable architecture, offering up endless possibilities to this day. The mimes will be activated by sound made by Morten Norbye Halvorsen and Chris Evans.
 
Gordon’s practice is primarily paintings and silkscreens that deal with the relation of a body to paint, and is focused on the language and politics of gesture. Her work has often confronted and challenged the canonical view of Modern art. This performance is no exception, attempting to introduce a lesser known work by a female artist to contemporary audiences and highlighting corporeal mime as a forgotten modernist language—a discipline which greatly influenced modern dance and theatre.
 
The performance at the Swiss Church marks the launch of a new publication celebrating Gordon’s Collision, featuring an introduction by Marie-Anne McQuay (Head of Programme, Bluecoat), an interview with corporeal mime Rita Pulga and an essay by curator Kirsty White. It will be available to purchase for a special price of £5 on the night.
 
Collision was first commissioned by the Bluecoat, Liverpool in 2016, with support from The Elephant Trust.

Melissa Gordon was born in Boston in 1981, and has lived and worked in London for a number of years. She has exhibited throughout the UK, Europe and US, including shows and projects at Spike Island, Bristol, Artists Space, New York; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; WIELS, Brussels; Kunstmuseum Bonn and Marres, Maastricht. Her recent exhibitions include The Mechanics of Fluids at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York (2018), Collision, The Swiss Church, London (2018), Fallible Space (2016) at The Bluecoat, Liverpool; Derivative Value (2016) at Overbeek Gesselschaft, Luebeck, DE and Routine Pleasures (2016) at Vleeshall, Middleburg. She will be in the upcoming show This is the Gallery and the Gallery is Many Things II at Eastside Projects, Birmingham. Her book “Painting Behind Itself” was published with Revolver Press in 2016. 

Morten Norbye Halvorsen is an artist and composer based in Stavanger, Norway. 

Chris Evans is an artist who has has had recent solo presentations at CAN / Centre d'Art, Neuchâtel (2018); Para Site, Hong Kong (2017); Praxis, Berlin (2015); Markus Luettgen, Cologne (2015) and Project Arts, Dublin (2014). His work has been included in a number of international group exhibitions, including Liverpool Biennial (2014), Taipei Biennial Taipei Biennial (2010), Athens Biennial (2007) and at venues such as CRAC Alsace (2015), and the Kunstverien Munchen (2014). He regularly makes music with Morten Norbye Halvorsen.

Rita Pulga is a corporeal mime who studied at L’Ange Fou Academy in London in 2010, which follows the teachings of Etienne Decroux.

Kindly supported by the Swiss Church in London, Bluecoat and Arts Council England.

What to expect? Toggle

CuratorsToggle

Kirsty White

Exhibiting artistsToggle

Melissa Gordon

Taking part

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