A Restorative - New work for Brighton Festival 2023

Sheila is currently making a new participatory art-work, commissioned by The Spire, for Brighton Festival:

A Restorative is a participatory art work created to revive and renew the spirits of those that drop by.

“Head along to The Spire where you’ll be invited to select your own fortifying mix of herbs and ingredients to add to a hand-made dream pillow (a scented pouch for the eyes, once used in sickrooms to ease nightmares). And then if you’d like to you can try it out, whilst listening to some carefully composed words, designed to help you drift off.

It’s no accident that the first four letters of restorative spell rest.”

The work is being shown on Sat 13 & Sun 14 and Sat 20 & Sun 21 May, 11am, 12pm, 2pm, 3pm, 4pm
FREE
Age 12+

A 45 minute experience

Book your ticket HERE.

Land Body Ecologies at the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum

Sheila and Sylvia Kokunda from Land Body Ecologies are presenting as part of “Photography, Archives and Ecologies in Anthropocenes” a workshop at The Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum convened by Curator and Researcher Bergit Arends.

“Which uses have historic archives of environments, particularly when coloniality and imperialism are embodied in collections of the natural world? To address this question the multi-disciplinary workshop explicates the connections between artistic practices, photography, archives, and environmental imagination in the presence of the narratives of the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene suggests the endangerment of the world through humans and, at the same time, the dissolution between the categories of nature and culture. Its narratives offer deep time perspectives into past and future. Through the critiques of the concept, such as Black Anthropocenes, environmental histories can however be considered afresh. Black Anthropocenes challenge white, European-centric perspectives on modernity and re-articulate junctures of historical events.

At the workshop we discuss photographic practices (notably ecological, socio-documentary, contemporary re-performance and re-uses of archival photographs) within these scientific, social, and political contexts. Archives provide compelling insights not only into environmental changes, but into ideologies and cultures of nature, human-nature relations, and the effects of change. The archive is considered within an expanded field: the documentary and object archive as historical repository; the environment as archive of the Earth; and the memory of the human body as archive. The widened conception of the archive and photographic practices reframe and activate histories towards multiple and de-centred environmental imagination.”

Other contributors include: Martha Fleming, Matthew Gandy, Joy Gregory, Harun Morrison & Diego Molina.

The workshop takes place on Friday, 10 March 2023 from 13:30 to 18:00 (GMT)

Bwindi Baskets - Image by Sylvia Kokunda, ABEG

Rallying the Commons - Performing Borders latest e-journal

Sheila is happy to have contributed to Rallying the Commons, Performing Borders - second e-journal! 

”The performingborders e-journal is a space to reflect on borders, live art, community, and resistance. Centering embodied knowledge and artists’ imagination as a space of knowledge production, the e-journal is a site to nourish and connect thinking and working practices. The theme of this year’s journal, Rallying the Commons, stems from the process of rallying together, of commoning and communing, for the creation of something better and the maintenance of other ways of being. It is a movement away from disembodied discourse towards actions and gestures that let us consider what we can do when we harness our resources, time, bodies, and care, to collectivize them.”

Other contributors include artists and activists working across cultural and political spaces: Ximena Alarcón-Díaz, Helena Walsh, Harun Morrison, Antonia Couling, Elif Sarican & Dilar Dirik, Lara Khaldi from The Question of Funding and Jack Ky Tan.

Read Rallying the Commons HERE

Artsadmin Lab

Sheila is currently doing an Artsadmin Lab in London for two weeks - a curated programme where the Artsadmin producing team collaboratively selects and invites 8 artists per year to join them in Toynbee Studios for two-week residencies, with a financial stipend of £1000.

She will be using the time and space to think further about care, spend a ‘making’ day with Sue Palmer on their next table top work (following Common Salt) called Atmospheric Forces, and developing a new art-work for Brighton’s The Spire which will be premiering in May 2023.

Sheila will also be attending an artists breakfast whilst in residence and an evening event on Slowness and Rest put together by artists Malaika Cunningham and Jennie Moran.

Soooo, growing lots of new ideas (hopefully) and encountering lots of different ecologies of thinking and people. Exciting.

Watch this space for updates…

Thistle encountered by Sheila on a recent Land Body Ecologies ‘Wonder Wander’…

Clod Ensemble - Communicating Through Covid

Sheila was recently part of Clod Ensemble’s Communicating Through Covid project.

As part of it she presented a new table-top one on one version of Some Hands To Hold You in UCLH’s ENT hospital for staff, and also in a special event held at Clod Ensemble’s new studies in Greenwich. Further details below:

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This September, our Performing Medicine team will share how we’ve been working with artists and health professionals during the pandemic.

This is a rare opportunity for those interested in arts, health, and the intersection of the two to experience the work of some ground-breaking artists working in these areas. We’ll offer practical sessions suitable for all.

Over two days we’ll be hearing from Michael Rosen, Makiko Aoyama, Hazel Holder, Sheila Ghelani, Amy Shelton, Tim Spooner, Silvia Mercuriali, Victoria Worsley, Bhebhe&Davies & Suzy Willson.

Sept 8th, 2 - 4.30pm
Sept 9th, 2.30 - 5pm

Clod Ensemble Studios, North Greenwich

Book now

Communicating through Covid is a multidisciplinary, collaborative research project drawing together artists, healthcare professionals and academics from drama and medical education, to investigate how arts based approaches can support healthcare professionals through the communications challenges which have arisen from COVID-19.

The project is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Queen Mary University of London & Peoples Palace Projects.

Read more about the project in this blog piece.

Some Hands to Hold You ampoules…

Land Body Ecologies - V&A Design Weekender

Sheila was part of a V&A Digital Design Weekend on 24/25 September, and presented a drop-in weaving activity, developed in collaboration with ABEG’s Sylvia Kokunda, on behalf of Land Body Ecologies.

It was a busy activity. People love to weave!

You can find the full weekend programme HERE & a short reflective blog post written after the event HERE.

Exploring the weave of land & health - photo by Sheila Ghelani

Common Salt at Chelsea College of Arts - Weds 4th May

UAL: Wimbledon Research presents Common Salt by Sheila Ghelani and Sue Palmer.

About this event

Common Salt is a performance around a table - a ‘show and tell’. 

It explores the colonial, geographical history of England and India taking an expansive and emotional time-travel, from the first Enclosure Act and the start of the East India Company in the 1600s, to 21st century narratives of trade, race and culture. 

We are pleased to present two performances of Common Salt at Chelsea College of Arts on Wednesday 4 May at 2:30pm and and 6:00pm

Booking is free but essential – places for these intimate performances are limited.

If you find you can no longer attend once you have booked, please cancel your booking or contact us so that we can make your place available to the waiting list.

To attend your performance, please arrive prior to your show time. Audiences will be received at the Chelsea College of Arts canteen which can be accessed via the Atterbury Street entrance (opposite Tate Britain).

Performances are 65 mins will be followed by 30 min informal Q&A with the artists.

If you have any questions please contact Shai Chishty: s.chishty@arts.ac.uk

The Commons: A Gathering - Thursday 31 March 2022

On Thursday 31 March 2022 Sheila is part of The Commons: A Gathering at The MERL. The symposium brings together the artists involved in The Commons: Re-Enchanting the World project with other invited practitioners and thinkers to engage in discussions around commoning. Those present will share their experiences and challenges of practicing and enacting different ways of working responsibly with our common resources of land, food, and environment and practices of solidarity. 

Contributors alongside Sheila include: 

Sigrid Holmwood, Kelechi Anucha and Carl Gent, Sam Wallman, Catherine Morland, Amanda Couch, Carmen Wong, JC Niala, Michael Smythe, Nick Hayes and Karl Fitzgerald

For further information go directly to The MERL event page link.

The Commons: A Gathering will be an onsite event with opportunities for remote access via Zoom. Booking is essential. Details can be found at this link:

https://merl.reading.ac.uk/event/the-commons-a-gathering/

The in-person event will also include a tour of The Commons: Re-Enchanting the World installations in the museum galleries and a Commons Feast lunch.

The Commons: Re-Enchanting the World is supported by Arts Council England, University for the Creative Arts, and Swedish Arts Grants Committee.

How to think: Radio Silence (community radio broadcast)

Sheila is part of Radio Silence a small community gathering that takes the form of a radio broadcast. Played just once on November 27th at 13.00pm GMT, this durational audio event brings together the voices of a community who have never met in person but who choose to share their work and lives with each other through the intimacy of sound.

PROGRAMME (running time approx 2.5 hours)

ONE: WATER, PLACE

Alexa Mardon, Ria Righteous, Khairani Barokka

TWO: OTHER WORLDS

Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Fili 周 Gibbons, Raju Rage, Paula Montecinos

THREE: MOURNING, GRIEF, MEMORY

Reza Mirabi, Omikemi

FOUR: TRACES

Venuri Perera, Sheila Ghelani, Nahuel Cano

+ BLACK HOLES (running time approx 1 hour)

full length audio performance by Alexandrina Hemsley and Seke Chimutengwende

Radio Silence is produced in partnership with artist Rajni Shah, the Academy of Theatre & Dance in Amsterdam, and the Frames of Representation festival at the ICA in London. The broadcast forms part of the AHRC project ‘Performance Philosophy and Animals: towards a radical equality’ led by Professor Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca. There are two in-person gatherings taking place: A London gathering, produced by Astrid Korporaal and co-hosted by Sheila Ghelani; and an Amsterdam gathering, produced by Marilixe Beernink and Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca, hosted by Paula Montecinos.

To attend the in-person event in London visit https://www.ica.art/films/symposium-how-to-think-radio-silence
To attend the in-person event in Amsterdam visit https://www.facebook.com/events/627004624967253/

This online broadcast will be hosted by Fili 周 Gibbons, who will be available should you have any technical difficulties on the day:

Email: fili.apothicaire@gmail.com

Instagram messenger: @filiapothicaire

Storying food: gendered, racialised and classed politics and possibilities

This November Sheila & Sue are part of an online symposium for reflection on the politics and possibilities of gender, class and race in storying food.

About this event

The University of Sussex Business School and the Sussex Centre for Cultural Studies (in the School of Media, Arts and Humanities), in conjunction with Brighton and Sussex Universities Food Network present

An Online Symposium: Storying food: gendered, racialised and classed politics and possibilities

11.30 to 17.30 GMT Wednesday 17th and 13.30 - 16.30 GMT approx. Thursday 18th November 2021 (timings for the work-in-progress session TBC)

Organising Committee: Barbora Adlerova, Cardiff University, Naaz Rashid, University of Sussex, Ruth Segal, University of Sussex, Elaine Swan, University of Sussex and Karen Wilkes, Birmingham City University 

Part of the activities of the FoodSEqual UKRI project

Symposium

Day One Wednesday 17th November: Keynotes and group discussions

Keynotes by - Professor Beth Dixon, Dr Sukhmani Khorana and Dr. Tammara Soma

Day Two Thursday 18th November: Workshop and Panel

Storying food panel - scholar-activists discuss the intersections of storytelling about food in very different domains and media

• Dr Anna Sulan Masing, Dr Olivia Sheringham and Dr Helen Taylor, and Sheila Ghelani and Sue Palmer

If you would like to attend the Symposium, please book via eventbrite by November 12th 2021.

Common Salt salt pile and assorted objects in close-up, photographed by John Hunter

BBC Future, the lost index series article by Kamala Thiagarajan

In August 2021 Sheila & Sue were interviewed by journalist Kamala Thiagarajan for a BBC Future, the lost index series article. The piece written by Kamala explores the story of the infamous Customs hedge seeded across india by the East India Company in the 1800s - one of the many intertwining stories they tell in their work Common Salt.

You can read the article by Kamala (The mysterious disappearance of the world's longest shrubbery) HERE.

Exeter at Sea - Outside the Box commission

Sheila and Sue have been making a new piece of work called Exeter at Sea. The commission is from Outside The Box at Exeter University and takes place next weekend. The work will feed into Atmospheric Forces (the work they are also currently making at University of Reading). Further details below:

Exeter at Sea

Southernhay Gardens, Exeter

Saturday 7 & Sunday 8 August 2021

1pm and 2pm each day

For up to 15 people per sharing

The Exeter  was an East India Company ship that made 8 voyages from the UK to Bengal and China via St Helena around southern Africa, and back. Join artists Sheila Ghelani and Sue Palmer as they bring these connections back to the city, mapping the histories of elsewhere into Southernhay Gardens through a local / international heritage tour that lasts around 30 minutes.

Book HERE

Places are limited. If you cannot attend after booking a place, it is important that you cancel your ticket so someone else can take your place. 

Please dress for the weather accordingly. If there is heavy rain forecast please check your email for information and updates.

Accessibility:

For the presentation of Exeter at Sea, audience will be standing, moving from place to place and sitting on the ground outdoors for around 30 minutes. Please get in touch if this is an issue for you and we can help.

Wheeled access onto the grass area is over a small lip at the edge of Southernhay Gardens (see meeting point directions).