The Voices of A Tempest | Act III: You Make Me Feel

Book tickets

Sat 18 Mar 2023

19.00-22.00

£8

River Rooms

New Wing

Part of Somerset House Studios

The final event in a three-part series of readings, screenings, performances and discussions accompanying Gallery 31 exhibition The Voices of A Tempest.

Marking the close of A---Z-curated exhibition The Voices of A Tempest for Somerset House Studios’ Gallery 31, Act III: You Make Me Feel foregrounds the celebration of affect, desire, and positivity with film screenings from Peter Spanjer and Jennifer Martin, a performance by Josh Woolford, a reading from Tarek Lakhrissi and DJ sets from Jeanie Crystal and Chooc Ly Tan.

Expanding the Gallery 31 show’s emphasis on storytelling and fictional activism, The Voices of A Tempest in Three Acts furthers the exhibition’s alignment with modes of resistance, resilience and alternative futures through a series of evening events taking place across The Voices of A Tempest’s duration.

About the artists

Jeanie Crystal

‘Jeanie Crystal is a jack of all trades. Birds art collective, Pattern Party, Harpies Strip Club, Faboo – her art and nightlife CV might seem varied, but there are through lines that marry her creative practice. Collaboration, creativity and sex positivity are key in her work, enlightening those exposed to it to empowerment, self deification and joy.

With her latest venture 'Faboo', a club night come theatrical troupe come fashion muses' wonderland, she's collected and curated a vivid, brilliant team of queer performers and artists intent on spreading the message of the power of irreverence and opulence. Her mission is to give the agency and power back to queer performers and sex workers, giving them the space to make their money in an environment which they hold the power and their audience gain access to radical pleasure and joy’
– Zooey Gleeves - Queer Island Discs

Jennifer Martin

Jennifer Lauren Martin (US/UK) is a London-based artist filmmaker, and writer-director. Her films have screened in competition at festivals, including British Shorts Berlin (Berlin, 2022), BlackStar (Philadelphia, 2021), SOUL Fest (London, 2021), Alchemy Film and Moving Image (Hawick, 2021), Montréal International Documentary Festival (Montréal, 2020), Kasseler Dokfest (Kassel, 2020), and European Media Art Festival (Osnabrück, 2019).

Her short film ‘TEETH’ was nominated for Best Experimental film at BlackStar (2021) and won Best Screenplay at SOUL Fest (2021). Solo exhibitions include 'Under the pink of my tongue: I found love', Kingsgate Project Space, London (2022); ‘TEETH', Primary, Nottingham (2020); and 'Channel 6', Turf Projects, London (2019). Recent fellowships and residencies: Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Madison (2022), Momentum: We Are Parable x Channel 4, London (2022), Hospitalfield, Arbroath (2021), Kingsgate Workshops, London (2020), FLAMIN Fellowship, London (2020), and Chisenhale Studio4, London (2017). Martin was named a Film London Lodestar Artist Filmmaker (2021). She is a co-director of the Black and POC-led and London-based filmmaking cooperative not/nowhere, which specialises in analogue film.

Peter Spanjer

Peter Spanjer (B. 1994, Germany) currently lives and works in London, UK. Peter graduated with a BA degree in Fashion Promotion from the University for the Creative Arts, UK in 2015 and he is currently studying for a MA in Contemporary Art Practice: Moving Image at the Royal College of Art, UK. His work is often framed around but not limited to the idea of resistance; resisting the emotional stereotypes put on black men; resisting the need to perform his blackness to others and thereby allowing room for self-exploration which he extends to an audience as a piece of visual art.
Solo exhibitions include The Tingle That You Feel On Your Tongue, Peter Spanger, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2020).

Group exhibitions include Tomorrow: London, Online Exhibition, White Cube (2020), Royal College of Art / Slade Graduation Show, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK (2020), An Exhibition, Public Notice, London, UK (2020), London Grads Now, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (2020), 20:20, Moving Image shown at Piccadilly Lights, Circa, London, UK (2020),Togetherness, Assembly Point, London, UK (2020), A—-Z: Gaze on the UNKNOWN, PAF Festival, Olomouc, Czech Republic (2019).

Chooc Ly Tan

Chooc Ly Tan is a multi-disciplinary artist, DJ and voyager who works across moving image, DJ sets, radio podcasts and club nights. Her practice sets out to create new visions of reality by subverting or repurposing systems and tools we use to understand the world around us – such as concepts and methodologies from physics, politics and music.

Her recent film commission On The Offbeat (2021) explores those disruptive and productive moments of suspension that surround syncopation, tracing the significance of the offbeat through Vogue Fem, diasporic rhythms, critical theory, and insect behaviour.

Chooc Ly’s moving image practice is complemented by and often merges with her DJ'ing and music outputs as an artist and event producer. She also runs the platform Décalé that puts on evenings of experimental sounds/visuals, in collaboration with cultural producer Anne Duffau. Together they aim to showcase visual artists, music producers and DJs who are disadvantaged by societal norms. Décalé means: 'Being displaced in space and time’. She is an associate editor for Ying Xiang 映象 journal, a research project reflecting on the influence of Asia in contemporary culture and a Lecturer in Fine Art, currently teaching at The Royal College of Art, London and The Ruskin School of Art, Oxford, both in the UK.

Josh Woolford

Born and raised in the South of England with mixed Dominican-British heritage, Joshua Woolford graduated Cum Laude from the Media and Culture department of the Design Academy Eindhoven. They went on to work between visual design, fashion and performance in Berlin, Seville and Tel Aviv before returning to London.

Recently graduated with an MA in Contemporary Art Practice from the Royal College of Art, Woolford’s practice utilises digital and print-media, performance, sculpture, sound and painting.‘My practice pushes me to experience the world from different perspectives which tend to at once overlap, interweave, complement and contradict each other.’

Woolford’s work largely explores and critiques shared experiences of contemporary (sub) culture(s). Identity, belonging and freedom are concepts which heavily inspire the outcomes of their work, ultimately leading them to uncover and address opposing themes of rejection, detachment and disorientation.

Notable exhibitions include the Van Abbemuseum - Eindhoven, Habait theatre - Tel Aviv, Gallerie V - Cambridge. As well as The Factory Project, HOME by Ronan Mckenzie, Harlesden High School, Soho House, Somerset House (1-54 Art Fair), William Blake House and Black Cultural Archives in London.

A---Z

A—Z presents works that focus on unbuilding systems of oppressions in terms of gender and racial identities. They are interested in empowerment in deconstructing racist and sexist structures and generating alternative (hi)stories in exploring personal experiences and non-linear, re-enacted storytelling. In line with this proposition, language and other forms of expression, from the bodily to the non-descriptive, are given a platform to create new ways of thinking and working together. The emphasis is placed not only on the audiences’ relation to the works, but also how various means of presenting politically-engaged work can become an activist practice, looking at practices that align with modes of resistances, resilience and positive/alternative futures.

Anne Duffau is a cultural producer, researcher, and founder of A—Z, an exploratory/nomadic curatorial platform. A---Z aims at opening up to audiences by sharing discursive practices in order to challenge preconceived ideas on race, gender identities and the so-called history in terms of power relationship. Anne was the interim curator at Wysing for the Polyphonic Festival 2020/2021 Editions, & a Tutor at the Royal College of Art’s Contemporary Art Practice Programme. She is part of the collective Transmissions.tv and Décalé. She produces live music under Alpha through several projects and collaborations (Décalé, MAENADS, Polisonics).

Tarek Lakhrissi

Tarek Lakhrissi (lives and works in Paris) is a French artist and poet with a background in literature. He works across installation, performance, film, text and sculpture, engaging with transformative narratives within language, magic and politics in relation to bodies.

Lakhrissi has been exhibited internationally at galleries and institutions including Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Museum of Contemporary Art; 22nd Biennale of Sydney (Sydney), Wiels (Brussels), Palazzo Re Rebaudengo/Sandretto (Guarene/Torino), Manchester International Festival (Manchester), Mostyn, (Llandudno), Tinguely Museum (Basel), HKW (Berlin), ICA (Londres), Shedhalle (Zurich); Fondation Ricard (Paris), Quadriennale di Roma; Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Roma), High Art (Paris), La Verrière, Fondation Hermès (BE), Haus der Kunst (Munich), Kevin Space (Vienna), Hayward Gallery (London), Auto Italia South East (London), Grand Palais, FIAC (Paris), Fondation Lafayette Anticipations (Paris), L’Espace Arlaud (Lausanne), Zabriskie (Geneva), Fondation Gulbenkian (Paris), Veda gallery (Firenze), CRAC Alsace (Altkirch), Kim? (Riga), Artexte (Montreal), Gaité Lyrique (Paris), SMC/CAC; (Vilnius). Lakhrissi’s artworks are part of different private and public collections like Defares, Sandretto Foundation or CNAP. He is represented by VITRINE Gallery (London/Basel).

Image Credit: Jennifer Martin, Under the pink of my tongue, I found love. 2022.