CWL NEWS ARCHVE

This is the CWL News and Funded Project News Archive. It draws an informative picture on which stories relevant to the creative industries were happening during the AHRC-funded period of Creativeworks London between 2012 and 2016.

— featured article —

Christopher Matthews performance installation: Formed View at the Arbeit Gallery

Arbeit Gallery will be participating in the annual Hackney Wicked festival, taking place from 16 to 19 of August 2013. On 16 August at 6pm, we are proud to present Formed View, a multi-media performance piece by the artist Christopher Matthews. Formed View investigates politics of perception of the moving figure through different kinds of improvisation. It is a collaborative research piece in which the body operates as a performance site and an object of observation, a piece “looking into how the body gives us signs that we both can and cannot read, how the moving body can operate in registers defying expectations” as the artist himself puts it.

The installation involves Lyle Wheeler, a contemporary dancer, improvising with the support of movement practitioner James Haswell D’Arcy, whilst artist Sally McKay and writers Alexandrina Hemsley, Jamila Johnson-Small and Charlotte Ashwell of BELLYFLOP Magazine make responses. Their responses will be fed to television screens so that spectators outside of the space but within the gallery can witness the research process. In doing so, Matthews hopes that fundamental questions will be asked: “What is the role of the dancer as he/she is being watched?”, “What is the role that the physical appearance of the dancer plays in the situation?”, “What role does the mode of presentation play in the perception of the moving figure?”, “How does improvisation affect or not the relation between the performer and the spectator?”.

Formed View will be streamed live on the Hackney Live website, the digital pilot platform initiated and funded by Hackney Council.

We invite everybody to watch the performance inside Arbeit Gallery via the TVs and/or participate remotely through the Hackney Live website.  Christopher will answer questions and comments on hackneylive.co.uk through the social media platform during the performance.  To be part of the streamed event follow us on Twitter – @hackneylive #hackneylive and like us on Facebook – fb/hackneylive.

Christopher Matthews (b. 1980, USA) lives and works in Hackney, London. Currently, he is a Creativeworks London Entrepeneur-in-Residence with Roehampton University where he will be devising courses on themes around the artist as a nomad.  His video and performance works have been presented at LimaZulu Project Space, Arbeit Gallery, Lingering Whispers exhibition and Off-Loop Barcelona. He was a founding member of The Industry, a collective of 6 performance makers. Christopher was an Emerging dance artist in residence at the Southbank Centre in 2011 and that same year was awarded a Wild Card residency in Croatia by Jardin D’Europe. He was a resident performer with the Hayward Gallery exhibition and tour of Move: Art and Dance from the 60’s and British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet. In 2012, he was a core performer for Tino Sehgal’s These Associations at Tate Modern.

The show will take place on August 16th from 6-9pm at the Arbeit Gallery in Hackney Wick.

Arbeit Gallery

Unit 4, White Post Lane
Queens Yard
Hackney Wick
London E9 5EN

 

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Creativeworks London is one of four Knowledge Exchange Hubs for the Creative Economy funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to develop strategic partnerships with creative businesses and cultural organisations, to strengthen and diversify their collaborative research activities and increase the number of arts and humanities researchers actively engaged in research-based knowledge exchange.