Third Space

About

Northampton’s population forms the starting point for NN Contemporary Art’s 2015 season presenting different ways to think about diaspora. The programme includes artists working with ideas of migration, home, exchange and the ultimate future diaspora of the human race.

Third Space begins the season with an exhibition by two Northampton-born artists working with family, culture and personal history.

Sayed Hasan’s grandfather was born in Pakistan and grandmother in England. His multidisciplinary practice documents and responds to identity, from his experience as a British mixed-race male. He uses lens-based media, performance and material forms to present personal narratives.

Sayed’s previous projects include My Grandad’s Car, exhibited at Heathrow Terminal 5 in 2012. Sayed Hasan and Karl Ohiri each travelled thousands of miles to Pakistan and Nigeria, in an attempt to bring their grandfathers’ cars to the UK. For Hasan this car is a memory of visits to see family in Pakistan as a child and has become a symbol for contemplating the complexity of belonging to multiple places and cultures.

For Third Space, Sayed is making a site-specific piece in NN’s ground floor gallery. His work will focus on representing the space which forms as a result of culturally mixed world, how it connects with the past, but offers new possibilities.

Vivenne Rattray’s parents were born in Jamaica and came to the UK in the 1950s, settling in the Midlands. Vivienne’s work is influenced by her experience as a first generation African Caribbean from her family to be born in Britain.

Third Space presents Vivienne’s monochrome oil paintings produced from photographs of her childhood and family in Jamaica, as well as personal collections of postcards representing her conflicting ideas of home.

Vivienne has adopted the Scottish surname given to her grandfather of Rattray for her artistic practice. Vivienne’s works focus on the perception and visibility of culture, its public and private face, identity, belonging and gender roles.