Word of Mouth was the culmination of mine and Mitch’s 2019 Kahoon Residency at SET, Bermondsey. I showed my film Manoeuvres and documentation of a Car Meet and BBQ I organised at the gallery.
Manoeuvres features two intersecting narratives of people involved in car meet and modification subcultures and explores their experiences of working culture.
The Car Meet and BBQ event mixed mechanics from Manoeuvres and the local community. Local residents shared stories and experiences relating to journeys, social mobility, working culture and creative expression.
Word of Mouth, is the result of collaborating with artist Mitchell Vowles, writer and thinker Roland Fischer-Vousden (SET), and academic and curator Alex Bickley Trott (Oxford Brookes University).
Manoeuvres poster
For the Word Of Mouth exhibition Pablo Molina Larrosa and I produced a poster that references Club night imagery (such as the famous Fabric Live posters).
I wrote an essay about my film Manoeuvres and included a QR Code that took visitors to a version of the film with subtitles.
Kahoon Residency
Manoeuvres focuses on the culture of car meets in South West England, an area highly dependent on car industries at risk of failing, with factories threatened with imminent closure.
Discussed by those within the community, the film reflects empathetically on the role that car meets and modifications have had on the lives of those involved and asks the viewer to question who has the right to inhabit public spaces, and to dictate the behaviours displayed there.
I also organised a community BBQ and car meet at SET (mixing mechanics, local residents and gallery visitors). I showed slide documentation of this event and Manoeuvres alongside Mitchell Volwes film It’s still banging in 2019′ at our Word Of Mouth exhibition, 2019 SET Gallery, Bermondsey.
About Kahoon Projects
Kahoon Projects is a collaborative project that provides a platform for contemporary artists from working-class backgrounds, and through which to develop the contemporary understanding of the term ‘working-class’.
The project provides space for open discussion about this difficult topic, promoting ideas and voices of artists who are from diverse working-class communities from across the UK and beyond.
The project is led by Alex Bickley Trott (Oxford Brookes University) and Roland Fischer-Vousden (SET), and in 2019 was based around a series of artist residencies, with accompanying community outreach events, and performance, poetry, music and film nights.
Kahoon residency at SET
Kahoon Projects were paid according to Arts Council England’s guidance for fair pay in the creative industries. The residency was suported by SET and Oxford Brookes University.
The residencies and final exhibitions were held at SET Bermondsey. SET is an artist-led charity that repurposes disused spaces into SET centres, in which it builds communities of artists and develops its broad arts and educational programme, SET projects.
Kahoon Projects
For curator reflections Click Here.
