Bubblegum Club

Tag: collectivity

  • Togetherness // a series focusing on the feeling of collectivity

    Togetherness // a series focusing on the feeling of collectivity

    Togetherness. The feeling of being part of a community, feeling as though you are connected to other people. The sharing of closeness with friends and family. This word was the focus and title of the visual project produced by Mikhailia Petersen. Teaming up with photographer Sven Kristian, hair and makeup artist Andrea Kloppers, stylists Naserian Koikai and Sune Smit as well as writer Naserian Koikai, the process of creating this project became an enactment of the idea of togetherness.

    Images of a hand placed delicately on top of another’s hand, models holding each other in intimate embraces. Closed eyes, soft hugs and lying on top of one another. The models display signs of affection towards one another, with the softness of the images imitating the soft gestures between the models.

    Mikhailia often pairs text with images in the projects she conceptualises. When asked about this she replied by saying, “My work has a special meaning to me. I don’t want my work to be perceived as fashion. It’s more than that. It had substance.” The poem that accompanies the images was written by Naserian as a response to being part of the process of creating the series. It takes on the role of providing context for the viewer, and offering a different entry point to engage with the work. This is not meant to be a prescriptive way of asking viewers to read the work, but is presented more as offering a device to tease out the concept portrayed in the work.

    Read the accompanying poem below:

    Fingertips pressed against each other

    We develop a sixth sense that empties itself in between the lines of our fingertips

    I rise from my awakening to float on still waters with effortless grace

    You fall from grace as your depth is consumed emptying itself into the rising tide

    Together we house life in varying foes with the magnetic force of our energy

    I envision soles rooted to the ground seeking nourishment

    You nourish my soul pouring out pieces of yourself to help me grow

    Together we find sustenance in the giving and sharing of ourselves to ourselves

    I am my own rhythm

    You heed to the wavelength of my vibrations

    Together we sound out our own melody

    I seek comfort nestled in the heat of your warmth

    You cradle my comfort wrapped in vulnerability

    Together we clasp on to the change of our seasons

    I inhale the richness of your majesty

    You exhale the gravity that comes with it

    Together we are pillars of strength with poise

    I savour your words

    You manifest my thought

    Together we create possibilities

    Would you be able to recognise yourself with your eyes closed?

    The rhythm of your own heart beat

    The fragility of your steps

    The youthfulness of your being

    The synchronised duality attached to the dependency seen in another human being

    Do your eyes only open at the point of the other?

     

    Credits:

    Models: Casey Redlinghys & Kimberley Davidson

    Hair and makeup: Andrea Kloppers

    Photographer: Sven Kristian

    Photography assistant: Alex Paterimos

    Styled by: Mikhailia Petersen

    Styling assistants: Naserian Koikai & Sune Smit

    Poem by: Naserian Koikai

    Produced by: Mikhailia Petersen

    Garments from: Margot Molyneux, Nicola West and AKJP.

  • Multimedia artist Ruth Angel Edwards on tracing and revealing the “sub” in culture.

    Multimedia artist Ruth Angel Edwards on tracing and revealing the “sub” in culture.

    Ruth Angel Edwards is a multimedia artist whose work explores the communication of ideology through pop culture, drawing from mainstream and subcultural youth movements both past and present. Within these, she looks at the ways audio and visual content are used to manipulate an audience and to disseminate information. This is especially apparent in her exhibition High Life/Petrification shown at the À CÔTÉ DU 69, which marked the end of her residency in Los Angeles, CA. In this exhibition, social detritus collected from the location reveals a mythologised Venice Beach as a “ritual site of pilgrimage, a space where diverse subcultural histories continue to make it a mecca for fans of alternative histories as well as touristic voyeurs.”

    Feminism, gender, collectivity and commodification are recurring themes. In particular, this brings to mind Edwards’ exhibition Enema Salvatore, held in Turin at the end of another art residency, showing new work at the Almanac Inn. The work questions the binary structures of western culture, the duality of good and bad. A cycle of ingestion, consumption, digestion, purification – and then finally – release, all explored through and within her own female body, whilst drawing external parallels to the “wellness/feel good” food industry. Hedonism, spectacle and rebellion are deconstructed and re-formed to create communicative and insightful immersive works.

    Edwards has been expanding on these themes in her most recent exhibition Wheel of the Year! EFFLUENT PROFUNDAL ZONE! commissioned by the Bonington Gallery as the first exhibition of 2018. An immersive installation invited the viewer to consider the inescapable cycles of waste and decay, a by-product of all our consumption, personal or material. Drawing clever parallels between overlapping ecologies – “from the futile pursuit of personal purification and ‘clean living’ to the increasingly rapid turnover of cultural content in the media and popular consciousness, to the wider perspective of the waste which is polluting our oceans, and threatening our very existence”– Edward’s makes the observation that the only difference is that of differing scale, and utilises art’s ability to evoke empathy and re-orient our often very narrow-minded subjectivities.

    Using video, audio, sculpture, performance and printed media, subcultures and social debris are historicised, tracing their trajectories and examining the wider socio-economic environments which give rise to them. Edwards traces the complex symbiotic relationship between the underground and the mainstream, while exposing their failures and flaws as well as any under-celebrated histories and latent positive potential. Edwards continues to explore personal cycles of consumption and waste, natural functions that are transformed and inescapably politicised as they connect with global capitalist economies.

    Ruth Angel Edwards studied Fine Art at Central Saint Martins and currently lives and works in London. Her work has been exhibited in the UK and internationally at Arcadia Missa Auto Italia South East, Tate Modern (London), FACT, Royal Standard (Liverpool), Human Resources, (Los Angeles) and MEYOHAS Gallery, (New York).

    Be sure to check out her website to see more of her work.