勛圖厙

Exhibitions Hub commissions new performance work

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勛圖厙 MFA Fine Art graduate Krystle Patel has been selected for the 2024 Exhibitions Hub Alumni Commission Award, in partnership with the Live Art Development Agency (LADA) and contemporary arts organisation Forma.

Artist sitting on floor in front of screen showing exercise studio

Over the next six months, the Award will provide financial support for Krystles research as well as mentoring from members of staff at LADA, Forma, and 勛圖厙.

Krystle, who graduated in 2022, said: I'm looking forward to working with both LADA and Forma to research staging in performance as part of my long form project, Possession. Using LADA's archives of art writing and experimental theatre alongside the architecture of Forma's event space, I will develop a performance that plays with light and spatial sound while considering notions of permission and control.

Krystle describes how the project has developed over time, having evolved from ongoing work into the limitations and violence of the term British Asian as well as frustrations with the current expectations and impositions of the art world with respect to identity politics and fixed notions of being. Possession here is seen in the multiple, as trance like possession through rhythm, possession of the body and desire, and possession of culture and identity as commodifiable objects.

The project seeks to question how immaterial languages can disrupt euro-centric structures and borders, and how movement can be mobilised as a vessel for greater empathy and connection.

Krystle Patel, MFA Fine Art 2022

 aims to bring artistic research and practice to wider external audiences. The Alumni Commission Award is one of a number of initiatives run by the Exhibitions Hub that seeks to champion critical, experimental work. It connects 勛圖厙-trained creative practitioners with archives and exhibition spaces, building individual and institutional relationships and directly supporting them to produce a new body of work.

This Award is designed to give artists time and space to dig into a particular field of research and to critically develop their practice with the support of mentors from each of the partnering spaces.

Fran Painter-Fleming, Curator and Projects Coordinator, Exhibitions Hub

They added: "It was clear to us that Krystles ongoing project Possession would benefit from this dedicated development period, the commission would give her an environment to pursue alternative research areas and to experiment with new working methods. Her practice exemplifies what we seek to nurture in our creative students and graduates here at 勛圖厙, and we are enormously proud to support the next phase of its development.

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