East London-based arts organisation Bow Arts unveiled its first central London project space during Frieze Week, with two site-specific and interactive exhibitions, Take a Seat + Absurd Visions, together with an immersive evening of live performance. It also collaborated with ‘non-fair’ Minor Attractions as the offsite event, participating artists included Rosie Gibbens, Tim Spooner and Mette Sterre.
But the great news is if you didn’t get a chance to see the exhibitions because of the crazy Frieze Week goings-on the exhibitions are still on and you should really try and catch them.
Take A Seat presents over 40 unique and sculptural artist-made chairs that mischievously merge the aesthetics of form and functionality, inviting audiences to both play and sit down across Shaftesbury’s vast open-plan space. Absurd Visions sees mechanised sculpture, film and performance create a labyrinth of bizarre and technological discovery throughout Shaftesbury’s ex-offices.
Take A Seat is a collaboration between Bow Arts and curatorial duo ha.lf (Haydn Albrow and Flora Bradwell). Several of the participating artists have created their sculptural chairs at Shaftesbury as part of a residency, responding to the building by both assimilating and rejecting the desolate office environment. Each day the artists’ chairs will be set out in a grid formation with visitors invited to reconfigure the show by pulling up a chair and taking a seat.
Take a Seat exhibiting artists: Milly Aburrow, Haydn Albrow, Henrietta Armstrong, Isobel Atacus, Jack Barford, Mat Barnes, Eleanor Bedlow, Flora Bradwell, Benjamin Arthur Brown, Polam Chan, Tom Coates, Boudicca Collins, Sophie Cunningham, Alice Dawson, Annique Delphine, Emmely Elgersma, Ruth Falkner, Srabani Ghosh, María Camila Cepeda Gnecco, Caitlin Hazell, Flora Hunt, Selby Hurst Inglefield, Sophie, Lourdes Knight, Hathaikan Kongaunruan, Ty Locke, Daisy McClay, Lindsey Jean Mclean, Eleanor McLean, Heidi Pearce, Ned Prizeman, Moe Redish, Drew Richards, Beatriz Santos, Marten Schech, Alice Sheppard Fidler, Naj Shirazi, Katie Sturridge, Roisin Sullivan, Sean Synnuck, Imrana Tanveer, Henryk Terpiowski, Erika Trotzig, Arlene Wandera, Ella West, Poppy Whatmore, Chen Yang, Danny Young.
Absurd Visions features work from Rosie Gibbens’ Parabiosis series and Tim Spooner’s A New Kind of Animal. Parabiosis unpacks the pregnant body with sculptures that combine ‘puppets’ and machinery. The title refers to the surgical technique of joining two living organisms together to share a physiological system. Spooner’s animal forms will be tangled and tethered by electrical cables, trapped under bits of remaining furniture, vibrating on empty lockers, and showing off in conference rooms. Originally made for Southwark Park and Bluecoat’s gallery spaces, this new iteration of A New Kind of Animal is reborn to relate and inhabit the office spaces at Shaftesbury, alongside Gibbens’ various ‘birthing’ contraptions.
Absurd Visions exhibiting artists: Rosie Gibbens, Hongxi Li, Tim Spooner, Mette Sterre.
Bow Arts takes over Shaftesbury Avenue- Take A Seat & Absurd Visions through to November 3rd 2024, 125 Shaftesbury Avenue bowarts.org/shaftesbury-avenue
Absurd Visions Live Performance Evening (performances will be durational).Opening hours: Wed 9 to Sun 13 Oct, 10-6pm; then Thurs-Sun, 12-6pm Admission: Free Bow Arts’ new meanwhile building 125 Shaftesbury Avenue is over 50,000 square foot of ex-office space, moments from Tottenham Court Road Station.
