Waiting to Exhale

About

Space36 is an occasional arts space based in an inhabited house in a residential street (Ashley Road) in Stroud Green, North London. The residents of Space36 have invited seven EU and UK artists to spend four months developing site-responsive artworks on how their idea of home and belonging has been affected by Brexit. The results fill a large part of the house and garden and will be on show over the weekends of 10/11 and 17/18 June (12-6pm) as an exhibition Waiting to Exhale. The artists taking part are: Liz Brown, Liana Bortolozzo, Esperanza Gomez Carrera, Ahmed Farooqui, Mario Varas Sanchez, Constanze Schweda and Louise Scillitoe-Brown.. The focus of the exhibition is on the personal rather than the political. Starting with their gut reaction to Brexit the artists explore different psychological aspects of Brexit and the feeling of dislocation and being unhomed. Louise Scillitoe-Brown plays with domestic soft and hard furnishing to express her unease at the changes ahead; Constanze Schweda places a toddler on a diving board 30 feet up in the air with no safety net below; Esperanza Gomez Carrera invites the visitor to take a guided meditation that questions its own foundation; Liz Brown’s suspended off-kilter doll’s house becomes a depository of other people's emotions about their homes; Liana Bortolozzo’s video uses irony and sarcasm to confront her deeply personal concern about Brexit; while Ahmed Farooqui places a tottering tower in the living room to question the tawdry fairy tale that is being spun around Brexit.. During the course of the exhibition there will be opportunities for visitors to talk to the artists and the hosts in the relaxed setting of a garden “Cafe” serving homemade cakes.