DE LA WARR PAVILION, Bexhill
De La Warr Pavilion. We believe that by putting artists and audiences at the heart of what we do, we can produce innovative and integrated cultural programmes that are accessible, relevant, create opportunities, drive aspirations and reflect the thinking and ideas of the world in which we live.
Previous Projects
Accelerate Studio from Project Art Works visiting I Hear you at De La Warr Pavilion
28 September 2019 – 19 January 2020
Mikhail Karikis
I Hear You
De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea
www.dlwp.com
A new moving image commission developed in collaboration with Project Art Works.
The autumn saw the launch of a major commission by Mikhail Karikis that explored the relationship between listening and care. Karikis’ new moving image installation was developed with Project Art Works, an artist-led organisation in Hastings that collaborates with people with complex support needs. Focusing on interactions between carers and non-verbal people who use Project Art Works’ studio spaces, Karikis invites us to pay attention to the sensitive tuning-in of support workers, artists and family members to those they support – a precarious role that is often invisible, misunderstood and undervalued by society.
Over the course of a year, Karikis spent time with different groups of people in Project Art Works’ studios. He was drawn to the intimate relationships between caregivers and those they support, noticing the subtlety and difference in each person’s non-verbal language, how it is paid attention to, heard and interpreted. The resulting installation comprises a series of video portraits of caregivers, captured in the acts of alert listening to and communicating with those they care for, accompanied by the non-verbal vocalisations caregivers hear and their responses to them.
Mikhail Karikis writes:
“At a crucial moment in history marked by persistent deadlock in political negotiations, divisive ideological discourse and growing differences of opinion over common purpose and future in the UK and in Europe, observing caregivers working with non-verbal people, so that they may be heard, serves as a gateway to a generous and inclusive way of thinking about relating to others. It is a hopeful affirmation that, no matter how difficult the circumstances are, communication is possible.”
Kate Adams (artist and Director of Project Art Works) writes:
“Through his sensitive interactions with us in the studio, Mikhail quickly recognised the expansive nature of non-verbal communication where the ‘inconspicuous signifiers’ of those who do not use language to communicate can be picked up and responded to by those who support them.”
This new work continues Karikis’ long-standing interest in non-verbal communication as a political agent that can transmit the experience of existence on the margins of society. He is also concerned with invisible and marginalised forms of labour, and those who are made vulnerable by capitalist society.
Mikhail Karikis’ project is commissioned as part of Project Art Works’ EXPLORERS – a three-year programme of awareness raising and encounter workshops, conversations, productions, commissions, exhibitions and seminars in collaboration with people who have complex needs and those who support them. Taking place against a backdrop of increased hardship and intolerance toward disabled people, the aim is to develop positive relationships between cultural organisations and the social care sector and to reposition people who have complex needs at the forefront of mainstream culture. The programme led by Project Art Works is taking place at partner galleries across the UK and in Australia with Autograph, Fabrica, De La Warr Pavilion, MK Gallery, Photoworks, Tate Liverpool and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.
I Hear You is kindly supported by the RTR Foundation.
EXPLORERS is supported though an ACE Ambition for Excellence grant awarded to Project Art Works and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation
Mikhail Karikis’ exhibition runs alongside an exhibition of an entirely new body of ceramic and textile works by Renee So, in the Ground floor gallery, created during a residency at West Dean College.
The Story so far
EXPLORERS Seminar November 2018
The event, which focused on Art, Rights and Representation was a day of discourse and action to explore care and curatorial practice.
We discussed collaboration, non-verbal communication, institutional empathy and the practice of artists with complex needs. Contributors were from across the arts and social care sectors.
