A HISTORY OF UNNECESSARY DEVELOPMENTS : an exhibition at Willesden Gallery
95 High Rd, Willesden, London NW10 2SF, UK
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.
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
Images below of my artworks in the exhibition / details and videos of all events below, please do scroll
Event #3 - The closing event of A History of Unnecessary Developments April 26, 2021
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.
Event #2 - The popogrou collective at A History of Unnecessary Developments April 23rd 2021
The second event to take place, away from the public with the seven person restriction of pseudo lockdown, this was the inaugural public showing of a new collective I am lucky to be a part of. POPOGROU - featuring Martin Wakefield, Susie Campbell, Bob Bright, Simon Tyrrell, Patrick Cosgrove (all of whom were present on the day) and Sylee Gore, Emma Hellyer, Victoria Kaye (who provided a brand new hand made publication of intersemiotic translations to rep themselves from beyond).
The performances were extraordinary, and the sense of it being somewhere between a workshop, a catch up of friends after so long without such things, and a high level literary endeavour exploring what is possible with the reading and performances really was uplifting. / For my own part I gave a reading from my 2020 short fiction pamphlet, which was written for the film Tereza and I made, which was screened at the whitechapel and I had realised that I had never read out loud before. https://sampsonlow.co/2020/01/29/the-car-giant-sj-fowler/
Event #1 Not an opening night - April 19th
Before public events were allowed, at the end of the early 2021 lockdown, we could have 7 people in the gallery, masked and socially distanced, and so did so, without public, and 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, SJ Fowler and Chris Kerr.
On the artists.
SJ Fowler is a writer, poet and artist who lives in London. His work has been commissioned by Tate Modern, BBC Radio 3, Somerset House, Tate Britain, London Sinfonietta, Southbank Centre, National Centre for Writing, National Poetry Library, Science Museum and Liverpool Biennial amongst others. As of 2021, he has published ten collections of poetry, five of artworks, six of collaborative poetry plus volumes of selected essays and selected collaborations. He was part of the first ever Hub residency at Wellcome Collection and he is associate artist at Rich Mix. His visual art has been exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo, V&A, Hardy Tree Gallery, Jerwood Space and Mile End Art Pavilion, with installations at Kielder Forest and Tate St Ives. He is lecturer in Creative Writing and English Literature at Kingston University and is a Salzburg Global Fellow. He is the director of Writers' Centre Kingston and European Poetry Festival. www.stevenjfowler.com
Tereza Stehlikova is a London based Czech artist who works across media, primarily in video and performance. She holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art, where she researched tactile language of cinema. She is currently engaged in a cross-disciplinary research, investigating how moving image can be used to communicate embodied experience. Tereza is a senior lecturer in still and moving image theory and practice, at the University of Westminster, London. Her work has been shown at a variety of film and art festivals around the world (including JihlavaInternational Documentary Film Festival in 2017 and Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, 2019, as well as in Tokyo, Montreal, Helsinki, Iceland, China etc. Tereza has also recently launched a new online, sensory focused arts/ philosophy/ science magazine TT journal https://tangibleterritory.art . Her creative practice can be explored here: https://cinestheticfeasts.com
