“Shadows draw across darkening corners in a world unsettling yet familiar. You’ve been here before; between dream and wake, in the echoing of your footsteps on wet concrete as street lights reflect off rain-sheened pavements at 4am. It’s within the Dionysian extraction of the self refracted through time and space, between what is known and what could be. We lose ourselves body to body as sound reverberates through the walls and sweat drips from the ceiling. We find ourselves in the dirt and dust, conjuring from the earth, drawing strength from a belonging that permeates your being but transcends a name. We find hope through the fracturing of a reality; another place all our own, waiting on the other side. There is a smouldering below your feet that never goes out, wanting, waiting.”

~ Bee Beardsworth ~

ALICE BLACK is delighted to announce ‘Fuego de Tierra (Earth Fire)’ which will preview at the gallery’s London space in Fitzrovia on Wednesday 17th April from 6pm. Carlota Bulgari / Rachel Bungey / El Hoskyns-Abrahall / Shivas Howard Brown / Anna-Lena Krause / Julie Maurin / Amber Pinkerton / Andrés Sanjuan / Penny Slinger and André Teixeira. Presented alongside the exhibition will be a unique programme of music, dance & movement by participating contributors; Anna-Lena Krause / Bee Beardsworth / Dafni Krazoudi / LORELEI and IN ARMOUR / James Massiah

‘Fuego de Tierra (Earth Fire)’ is the manifestation of a burning curiosity to explore temporal topography as a site of sacrality, genesis, protest and discovery. How can we imagine a transcendental embodiment under the pressure and violence of the present moment through creation that enacts a transmutation of innate ancient knowledge and a vision of a utopian future? Paradoxical paradigms are alchemised into something unknowable but universal through shared expression. Desire, suffering, lust, loss and love are fused and bound through a corporeal record of the subconscious, intertwined with memory and emotion. We choose to see the fleeting potential for a changed world through the cracks in our assumed reality. We resist, fertilising the future through ritualistic fervour and planting ourselves in the decay with the flowers, the weeds and the dirt.

Carlota Bulgari’s practice situates itself within a cyborg-feminist framework which challenges the dominant anthropocentric perspective. Supported by interests in postmodern philosophy and feminist sci-fi narratives, Bulgari’s work examines the formation and ‘deformation’ of subjectivity within a neo-capitalist context. Now London based, the Italian and Spanish artist’s cross-disciplinary approach encompasses performance, installation, and sculpture, with biomaterials being alchemised with technological components, underscoring the importance of including both the human and the nonhuman in processes of co-creation.

Rachel Bungey is a London based artist whose practice explores our relationship to the natural world through concepts of entanglement and abstraction. Working across sculpture, drawing, and painting, Bungey constructs fictitious hybrid anatomies; a whale jaw bone or a mantis arm become storytellers of the past, allowing us to unravel the narratives of our human and non-human predecessors. Delving into the realms of emotion, intuition, and the subconscious, Bungey gives material form to the symbiosis shared between all living organisms.

Shivas Howard Brown (Friendly Pressure) lives and works in London. Shivas was raised in a dual heritage Jamaican Indian household, where family events were dominated by music. Shivas is the founder of FRIENDLY PRESSURE, a concept audio store and curation service who produce bespoke loudspeaker systems and source, refurbish, and customise heritage systems. Fusing a deep literacy in musical technology with the diasporic potency of Jamaican sound-system culture, FP specialise in tailoring the audio to each space. All systems - bespoke or heritage - seek to present an unparalleled warmth and detail, partnered with amplifiers and componentry that is rare, high quality and vetted.

Edinburgh born, London based Elena Hoskyns-Abrahall is a non-binary artist whose sculpture and performance based practice uses storytelling to address themes of gender, identity politics and queer theory. Taking objects synonymous with contentious tropes of adolescence, the artist transforms them into embodiments of desire using precious materials and casting processes. Elena’s practice reveals the beauty and vulnerability of being in a state of flux. Through the eyes of the transgender experience, Hoskyns-Abrahall isolates and amplifies little pockets of beauty, symptomatic of something that is desperately desired as opposed to merely endured.

Anna-Lena Krause is a Berlin born, London based multidisciplinary artist whose research is rooted in the field of psychology and behavioural science. A practice spanning sculpture, performance and photography, Krause explores new methods of investigating and dissecting the bonds connecting people in the modern world. Krause’s emotionally and materially charged works reveal the complexities of our psycho-social being and the innate contradictions and paradoxes fundamental to the human condition.

Julie Maurin’s sculptural practice is born of material abandonment and reclamation. Foraging for manmade detritus from London streets and elements coughed up by the natural world, Maurin transforms discarded, forgotten and often broken parts of toys, jewellery, metal, bones and animal matter into uncanny and highly charged sculptural works. Seemingly disparate elements come together to create eerie yet alluring silhouettes and symbolically-laden creatures that speak to a fascination with the abominable and the beautiful. A composite of material strata, points of reference range from ancient texts and rituals to TV programmes the artist watched as a kid.

Amber Pinkerton was born and raised in Jamaica, with the influence of her homeland emanating through her work as she explores themes of identity politics, youth, cultural collective agency and diasporic belonging. Now living in London, Amber’s oeuvre comprises photography, autobiographical self-portraiture, virtual reality, sound and the written word. Pinkerton’s self-confessional and diaristic works may be read as visceral, vulnerable and prescient explorations of feminist auto-theory and post-coloniality.

Andrés Sanjuan photographic works are intense, limit-pushing odes to bodies in movement and moments of human intimacy. Giving material form to our shared pleasures and heartbreaks, Sanjuan’s work operates in a place of delicacy, risk, transcendence and freefall as he dances a chartered route in pursuit of capturing ephemeral and fragile human bonds. Harbouring deep personal ties to the natural world, Sanjaun’s works are shaped by an attempt to find a semblance of order in a world marred by mystery.

Penny Slinger’s provocative practice spans photography, collage, film and sculpture. Active from the late 1960s, the London born, LA based artist emerged into a maelstrom of political protest, social change and sexual freedom. She graduated from the Chelsea School of Art in 1969 having developed a visual language she described as 'feminist surrealism', influenced by her study of European Surrealism, her friendship with Roland Penrose and association with Max Ernst. Slinger quickly began exploring and investigating the notion of the feminine subconscious and psyche, using her own body to examine the relationship between sexuality, mysticism and femininity.

Portuguese born, London based Andre Teixeira is a self-taught artist whose miniature psychedelic pencil works depict elaborate tableaus and phantasmagoric scenes that writhe and transform, distorting masses of shape from the human to abstract. At once unsettling and enchanting, these intimate and detailed works capture the essence and motion of Teixeira's background as a renowned tattoo artist while paying homage to the dark surrealism of HR Giger and Sibylle Ruppert.

Greek born, Berlin based Dafni Krazoudi emerges and disappears through her movement-based works, rousing her spirits through an embodied exploration of ideas around psychology, metaphysics, and forces that shape human meaning. Krazoudi’s particular interest falls on the innate gravitational pull that dominates human nature but extends beyond our full comprehension. Relating the spontaneous to the historic, and the sacred to the anarchistic, Dafni tells stories that reconcile, bind and intertwine the inseparable nature of body and mind.

LORELEI is a sound artist, producer and performance artist based between London and Berlin. In fusing electronic production with classical music sensibilities, she explores the possibilities of worldbuilding a contemporary sublime. Her most recent work delves into the potential of spatial audio technologies, creating the 32-channel Ambisonics piece Madrigals together with sound artist and composer Ben Meerwein. Their band project, IN ARMOR, sees the continued collaboration between LORELEI and Ben, crafting a genre-fluid sonic language, in which Pop, the Baroque and the Experimental can collide. Her sound piece for ‘Fuego de Tierra’ draws on the healing powers of Solfeggio frequencies and the words of Ana Mendieta (read out by members of the FLINTA community), exploring modern ritualism through a feminist lens.

Bee Beardsworth would like to thank Alice Black and Jane McCabe of ALICE BLACK, Little Greene, Friendly Pressure & Richard Saltoun Gallery for their support.

Written by Bee Beardsworth, in collaboration with ALICE BLACK.

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