Two weeks, bursting out of lockdown, pushing through barriers of fultility, or difficulty in opening up, coming out of routines, meeting friends again, making works, dragging them across London, collaborating, reading, performing, cleaning, hanging - this exhibition, all told, feels well worth it, now it is finished. We documented all the events and works in great depth www.stevenjfowler.com/developments and before we left I managed to shoot this tour, so that the works briefly up may be seen in perpetuity.
A note on: Facial animations and the closing event of A History of Unnecessary Developments
A third and final restricted event for Tereza Stehlikova and I’s exhibition at Willesden Gallery, this was another grand one, curated ably by Tereza. These events, with a max of 7 people, create something obviously intimate but also beyond that, removing expectation of audience, something palpably focused and playful and relaxed. This night we had powerful poetry readings by Cristina Viti and Stephen Watts, alongside talks by Jo Gibbons, my old friend and an incredible landscape architect, as well as animation performances and more. For my own part I read again, for the second time ever, from my CAR GIANT pamphlet that I had written for Tereza and I’s film, which is the centrepiece of this exhibition. http://www.stevenjfowler.com/developments
I also, unexpectedly, and gladly (after spending the event filming with two cameras, for my youtube and tereza’s instagram live) got to collaborate with the animator and artist Birgitta Hosea. http://www.birgittahosea.co.uk/ Birgitta was projected neon asemic poems and lines and drawings upon my own asemic poems! A quite brilliant performance, and she allowed me, or urged me, to get in there, in the way, to be painted upon. At first I wrote on my works and then I just stood there, like a dummy, in the best role a collaborator can have, while she drew upon my visage. It was cool to see on video afterward.
Though the exhibition runs for another week, it was this event that cemented Tereza and I’s feeling that the whole endeavour, run without much footfall as the lockdown trace remains, was wholly worthwhile.
A note on : Opening night at A History of Unnecessary Developments
In one day Tereza Stehlikova and I managed to get up a rather ambitious exhibition in the Willesden Gallery, in Willesden Green Library, just in time to welcome in a non-public opening night. A future post shall be dedicated to the works in the exhibition, which balances huge asemics and art poems with Tereza’s brilliant frottage, photos and our film screened on a loop. For now, the opening night, where we could have 7 people in the gallery, masked and socially distanced, with each of the 7 being a poet / artist, who presented readings and performances, including 3 books from If a Leaf Falls press. A kind of poetry lock-in, and the first event for many in 13 months or so. With Lavinia Singer, Dan Power, Emma Filtness, David Spittle, Tereza Stehlikova, myself and Chris Kerr, it was a really lovely evening. Visit http://www.stevenjfowler.com/developments for all the videos of the performances. My own performance included a rubber elephant balloon, poems and the writing on the wall. Tereza’s included a group frottage. It was intimate.
Exhibition : A History of Unnecessary Developments - April 19th to May 2nd
www.stevenjfowler.com/developments
at The Willesden Gallery, London
An exhibition by Tereza Stehlikova & SJ Fowler
The gallery opening times are:
10.30am to 2.30pm, Mon to Fri
12.00pm to 4.00pm, Sat and Sun
Government guidelines are in place throughout the exhibition, with seven people allowed in the gallery at one time, masked and socially distanced. The exhibition has been developed and supported by Nadia Nervo.
Note - Really lovely to have a second exhibition with Tereza in West London, extending our ongoing worm wood project into the brilliant Willesden Green based, library housed, willesden gallery… For more on our project in general visit stevenjfowler.com/wormwood and for our last exhibition visit stevenjfowler.com/wormexhibition
Press Release : A longform collaboration between the artist-filmmaker Tereza Stehlikova and artist-poet SJ Fowler takes shape in an exhibition of experimental documentary, found sculpture and abstract writing. Exploring, recording and revealing the environs of industrial West London, this exhibition creates a temporary shrine to overlooked corners, pathways and ley lines of an area of London soon to face major redevelopment. Taking in vistas and flotsam from across Wormwood Scrubs, Kensal Green Cemetery, the Grand Union Canal and beyond, this fusion of artistic methods, centred around a feature length film previously screened at Whitechapel Gallery, aims to offer an aperture into the lived in, urbane and often unseen beauty of a part of London soon to change.
The exhibition of part of an ongoing collaboration between Stehlikova and Fowler, begun in 2015, which aims to document the disappearing. So far the endeavour has created multiple films, new performances, events, publications and a month long exhibition as part of an extended residency with the Dissenter's Chapel at Kensal Green Cemetery in 2017. http://www.stevenjfowler.com/wormwood
A note on : Tangible Territory journal with Švankmajer, Josipovici et al
My friend and collaborator Tereza Stehlikova has started a new journal online, entitled Tangible Territory “a platform that offers a space for various voices to meet and discuss themes relating to the role of the body, the importance of place and embodied experience, in giving meaning to our every day experience of life and art.” For the first issue, which rather extraordinarily includes Jan Švankmajer and Gabriel Josipovici amongst others, a genuine conglomeration of unique artists, I wrote a small piece on London and walking https://tangibleterritory.art/journal/issue1/s-j-fowler-experiences-of-necessity/
“My exploration of London is a sacrosanct subject I do not normally write about. This is because it is for the future, or because it is not a material to make things out of, but a thing I just do. I’m likely better to write about it when I have left London, if I do that upright.
What I do know is that I’d rather walk than write, which is why I have yet to complete longer works of fiction or non-fiction. I am literally out walking instead. I know how to walk from anywhere north of the river to anywhere else north of the river within the bounds of say, zone four, without the aid of a map. Mapless I wander, impressing friends and loved ones with my ability to end up where I had intended to.
But I also do not write about my London because I have often noticed, and recoiled, at those professional artists who turn everything they like into work, without fear of the thing being despoiled, or it being uninteresting to others. I shan’t write about it here. Simply to say, I walked a great deal during the lockdown of 2020. I keep a pedometer because I find in it a curious companion and across London I would average forty miles a week.”….
A note on : Filming Worm Wood with Stehlikova, Gibbons, Davidson
Filming again, Tereza Stehlikova and I’s film about disappearing / terraformed West London, and its mysteries, continues to grow, this time in the glowing boil of a heatwave. We were joined with others for this day, which is a rarity. www.stevenjfowler.com/wormwood
I’ve been in residence with J&L Gibbons for six years now, that is to say I have built a wonderful friendship with landscape architects Jo Gibbons and Neil Davidson, and their team, over many years. We meet occasionally and they lay out all their remarkable work for me, bringing me into their processes, their conceptual thinking, their pragmatic practise - their constant efforts to think laterally and liminally with the design and shape of the places we live. They are inspiring people - outgoing, passionate, tireless, considered and considerate. Rarely do I meet people operating at such a high level of effect on the world around us who are never lost within a private professional culture or other personal motivation by the very demands of that work. (Worth checking out their new website too https://jlg-london.com/Practice)
Introducing Tereza and Jo and Neil a few years ago led to some grand moments, most especially in Kensal Green Cemetery and The Garden Museum, so it was natural we would get together to film. We met at Willesden Junction, traced Scrubs Lane down past towering new high rise flats, named Notting Hill Genesis - the beginning of all things. The new development Oold Ooak continues to grow, ebbing over the west lands, clearing space, jutting up into skylines. No Trellick Towers in stone, just rows of glassy plastic flats coming together, built by workers who poured through the lockdown still labouring at risk. Thousands of new homes coming, the HS2 burrowing underneath. Haunts now becoming glossy magazines alive, stuffed full of more people where there is now nearly no one. But us. We joined Wormwood Scrubs at its most northwestern tip, the scrubland as persuasive, quiet, welcoming and atmospheric as ever, before coming back to the grand union canal to finish. It’s a route I must’ve walked 300 times or more. Never with my friends, capturing snippets of conversation, knowing one day the brief connections will be part of the greater whole Tereza and I have been building
A note on: WormWood film collaboration with Tereza Stehlikova continues
after a beautiful summer in kensal green cemetery in 2017, tereza stehlikova and i have continued collaborating on our overall longterm project - a film that explores the hidden corners of industrial west london and its oncoming disappearance beneath the old oak development thing. we've been shooting extended scenes in certain locales on the grand union canal and ive been writing texts. the new films, chapters, will be screened later in the year, as the first was at the garden museum and other venues over the last 12 months. http://terezast.com/
Willesden Junction is the same. Goodbye ozone layer.
One bridge, a concentration on small vanishing places.
An example is the bridge over the canal, the grand union canal. that leads to the hythe road estate. they have 300 cctv cameras roaming, 24 hours a day.
A note on: Illumations - Thomas Bernhard at Austrian Cultural Forum
]another grand entry into this event series i'm lucky to be curating for the austrian cultural forum, this time celebrating thomas bernhard, an author who has always been important to me, seeing the world as it is, and not the plastic rendition of optimism that creates an opposite feeling in the hearts of those with their bloody eyes open.
The lineup was really stellar, I got to work with the amazing Maja Jantar once more, and the equally inspiring Tereza Stehlikova, and discover two visiting austrian poets, Raphaela Edelbauer and Sophie-Carolin Wagner, who i had naturally researched but never seen perform live.
as ever what the artists do in these events, recreating the authors in question through such innovative means, is inspiring, and the ACF couldnt be cooler to work for http://www.theenemiesproject.com/illuminations
A note on: closing the Worm Wood exhibition
One final event marked the end of this culmination of two years of collaborating with the brilliant tereza stehlikova, and the end of the summer, one spent with many days and nights in the chapel and grounds of the east end of kensal green cemetery. There was a palpable sense of emotion during some of the performances, all of those many artists who have contributed to the programme seemed to connect their new works often to their experiences of grief and death, and again, some of the works were very intense in a beautiful way. Perhaps its because these events have been intimate, 20 to 30 people and in such an amazing space. tony white, thomas duggan, susie campbell, iris colomb and more, they were all very generous about the project and to share their time and works. tereza and i plan to continue to work together on Worm Wood, for the foreseeable future, especially now it is so tied into the coming old oak development and the disappearance of the parts of west london we set out to explore long before we know old oak existed.
checkk out stevenjfowler.com/wormwood
A note on: Worm Wood exhibition : August 3rd to September 3rd
Worm Wood : an exhibition at Kensal Green Cemetery The Dissenter's Gallery
by Tereza Stehlíková and SJ Fowler - August 3rd to September 3rd
391 Ladbroke Grove. London W10 5AA. Entrance via Cemetery door on Ladbroke Grove or Main Gate during opening hours. Viewings by appointment.
An exhibition of found objects, artefacts., paintings, photographs and a new collaborative film from Czech moving-image artist Tereza Stehlikova and writer SJ Fowler which explores the historic, hidden and idiosyncratic in Kensal Green Cemetery, and its connection to disppeared and ever disappearing London. www.stevenjfowler.com/wormwood
Special View : Poetry Reading - August Wed 16th : Doors 7pm : Free Entry
www.theenemiesproject.com/dissenterschapel
Held in the beautiful Dissenter's Chapel, nearly twenty London-based poets will read mostly new works responding to Kensal Green Cemetery with Eley Williams, Fabian Peake, Joe Turrent, Michael Zand, Ariadne Radi Cor, Clover Peake, Adriana Diaz-Enciso, Ahsan Akbar, Alex MacDonald, Lavinia Singer, Richard Scott, Jonathan Mann, Giovanna Coppola, an audio installation performance by Pascal O'Loughlin & more.
Special View : Performance Night - August Thurs 24th : Doors 7pm : Free Entry
The exhibition's official special view before closing with screenings, interactive tours and performances, featuring new works in response to the place and themes on display from Gareth Evans, Thomas Duggan, Alexander Kell, Tereza Stehlikova, SJ Fowler and more to be announced.
The exhibition is one of many facets of Worm Wood, a collaboration between the artists begun in 2015 and planned as ongoing with the area’s development. Worm Wood has included a summer long residency at Kensal Green Cemetery Dissenter's Chapel, multiple events, a film and publications.
A note on: collaborating with Tereza Stehlikova on a film about Willesden Junction
For nearly a year I've had the pleasure to collaborate with the artist Tereza Stehlikova, who works in moving image. Our collaboration is about an area of London where we both live, in separate ends, enclosing, one of the few spaces I've really felt as home. Willesden Junction, Wormwood Scrubs, the Grand Union Canal, Kensal Green cemetery... And so far, all we have done is talk, allow the exchange of ideas to be as it should be, exploratory in friendship as well as ideas.
We recently began shooting the film, urged into action because of the plans to completely redevelopment this brilliant, beautiful, industrial, rarely-visited part of London. The Old Oak Development will be one of the biggest in the cities modern history, thousands of new flats, and people. What we are witnessing, the places I walk everyday, will disappear forever.
Here's Tereza's post on our beginning https://cinestheticfeasts.wordpress.com/2016/03/31/nw10/