Common Salt at Museum of London Docklands

Sue and Sheila are performing Common Salt at Museum of London Docklands on 9th and 10th October (all being well Covid-wise). It would be great to see you there! Only 14 tickets available for each performance… If a performance is sold out it is worth checking for returns things being as they are… (people may change their mind last minute). Click HERE for booking details.

NB You also get to do a self-led tour around the museum after it is closed to the general public as part of the ticket…

Performances are at:

9th October - 3.15pm & 6.30pm

10th October - 16.45pm

Image credit: Paul Samuel White

Covid and the ethics of care as work

TOMORROW!

And then also available to listen to later as a podcast:

Covid and the ethics of care as work
Live Global Staffroom podcast by Manual Labours 
Monday 15 June, 12 noon BST
Listen here: https://www.twitch.tv/theglobalstaffroom

In this episode will be discussing the ethics and politics of caring as paid, unpaid, formal and informal work from the perspectives of artists, activists, carers, academics and mothers. We will be joined by artist and adult care worker Fauve Alice, Professor of Geography Rosie Cox (Birkbeck), artist Sheila Ghelani, PhD student Sara Paiola and Professor Lynne Segal (Birkbeck).

Manual Labours are Jenny Richards & Sophie Hope

This episode is supported by Birkbeck Gender and Sexuality research forum.

The Confined Public Space space - 10 day commission

In April this year Sheila was one of several artists invited by the Brussels based organisation CIFAS to spend 10 days thinking about Public Space in relation to the Covid-19 crisis. Questions she was asked to consider were:

How do we make art at a time when everyone fears for their health and that of their loved ones? Is there an art of confinement? What artistic strategies should be deployed in order to create in this context? What has become of public space today?

CIFAS are an organisation that have been working with artists in public space for 10 years, investigating the city as an open space for reflection and action, organising workshops, debates and artistic interventions. Sheila last worked with the organisation in 2016 when she was commissioned to make something for ‘Art Facing Terror’ (following the Brussels bombings of that year).

Starting points for Sheila with this commission have been the idea of care, her reluctance to respond to the present moment with art, the public space in relation to the garden, and perhaps her dreams, because even if she is confined, she “still finds herself in the public space and interacting with others every night while she sleeps..."

Sheila will share the work she has made as a result of this commission later this month….

Creative Arts and Climate Crisis Event - May 20th

The Ramble 2 sound loops from Sheila’s Rambles with Nature series will be available to listen to as part of Creative Arts and Climate Crisis - an event happening online on Wednesday, May 20th (16:30-18:00) organised by Dr Yaron Shyldkrot, Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at University of Sheffield.

Further details below:

Despite the somewhat optimistic headlines we are still facing a state of climate emergency. What and how can we – as artists, researchers, audiences or humans – do? Creative Arts and Climate Crisis is a cross-disciplinary virtual event that brings together artists and scholars to explore different approaches through which creative and performing arts are responding to the climate crisis and its wider implications.

Attempting to foster a dialogue between artists and scholars working across theatre, film, poetry, dance, fiction, live-art, photography, sound and drawing, and who have been investigating, making and writing about ecology, environment, sustainability and climate action, we are delighted to welcome:

Amy Sharrocks (live artist, sculptor, filmmaker and curator)

Izzy Inkpen (environmentalist inter-disciplinary artist and producer).

Dr Lisa Woynarski (performance-maker, lecturer and ecodramaturg)

Dr Lucy Burnett (writer, performer, photographer)

Dr Laura Joyce (novelist, writer and lecturer in Creative Writing)

With additional contributions from

Sheila Ghelani (interdisciplinary artist)

Dr Alex Lockwood (creative and critical writer, journalist and editor)

Contributors will offer a short provocation/presentation or reading of their work. These will be followed by a group discussion and a Q&A with all participants and attendees.

Creative Arts and Climate Crisis seeks to act as a spring-board and facilitate further joint conversations about various modes, methods, actions and opportunities for engaging with the current threat of climate change through the arts and in academia.

The seminar is free and open to all. Part of the event’s support will go towards offsetting its carbon footprint.

The event will take place on Wednesday, May 20th, 16:30-18:00 on google meet. 

A recording of the conversation along with the different contribution will be available online (via Eventbrite) until the 27th of May.  To join the event please follow https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/x/104525029176/ or email y.shyldkrot@sheffield.ac.uk. 

Image of a participant listening to a Ramble 2 sound loop installed in a living tree

Thinking about Common Salt - A Blog

Sheila and Sue were due to show Common Salt at The British Library next week as part of their ACE national tour (along with several other cancelled dates)… They were REALLY looking forward to it and are very sad not to be there…

So instead the pair have been asking each other Q&A’s about the piece so as to reflect on and begin thinking about their Common Salt book, which they are also just beginning to make.

You can read some of them in a blog HERE

Common Salt at Queen’s House in Greenwich in December 2019. Photo credit: John Hunter (RULER)

New project working with young carers & Heart of Glass

Sheila has been commissioned by Heart of Glass to work with young carers in St Helens. Together they will be making something for presentation in the summer.

The project has a starting title of This Head / These Hands but may change, depending on what happens over the course of the making…

More details will follow as the project unfolds…

Photo of banner displayed in World of Glass taken during a research trip

Imagining India in Southall

Sheila is part of a new AHRC funded UAL project called Imagining India, which explores the memories, experiences, and relationship to India of first-generation South Asian communities in the UK. Initially the project runs weekly from Feb 2020 in Southall. Further details can be found on the Imagining India blog HERE and below:.

'Work in Progress' - University of Reading

Sheila and Sue are currently part of of University of Reading’s 'Work in Progress' project in partnership with South Street Arts Centre.

'Work in Progress' is the second ACE funded project (led by Lucy Tyler and John Luther) in which artists develop new performances with the support of Minghella Studios and South Street, University of Reading Arts students and Reading communities.

To kick of their ‘Work in Progress’ residency Sheila and Sue presented Common Salt at MERL at the end of January, and will go on to make ‘Atmospheric Forces’ (a new work) and develop a Pollinator Event about Atmospheric Forces later on in the year…

Events and opportunities to get involved will be announced as the project develops.

Image of a display put together at MERL to accompany Common Salt

Performing Solidarity - Self-Organising, Self-Instituting

Sheila is part of a Performing Solidarity event next week… Further info and booking details below:

Performing Solidarity - Self-Organising, Self-Instituting

4 December at 7pm, Live Art Development Agency, London

Following our first event ‘Performing Solidarity - Making Common Cause’, please join us for a second gathering discussing the ways that solidarity can be organised and performed through the arts. In what ways can performance participate in the wider solidarity economy? How does performance function as a site for solidarity? Can performance practice offer specific models for organising solidarity? Each gathering brings together artists and representatives from the wider solidarity economy to share their creative and activist approaches. They are an invitation to collectively consider current social issues and alternative ways that artistic practices can offer with regard to creating new structures for relating and coexisting.

With Joon Lynn Goh, Sheila Ghelani, Rosalie Schweiker and Jane Trowell (Platform)

For booking (free of charge) please visit: http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/whats-on/performing-solidarity-self-organising-self-instituting/

Organised and chaired by Noyale Colin (University of Winchester, Centre for Performance Practice and Research) and Stefanie Sachsenmaier (Middlesex University).

Further events to follow at the University of Winchester and Middlesex University in early 2020 - details forthcoming.

https://www.facebook.com/events/656383968226159/

Women's March, 2017. Image by Noyale Colin

Common Salt out and about again in 2019 & 2020

Thanks to an Arts Council England grant Common Salt will be out and about again in 2019 & 2020.

To book tickets and keep up to date with when the piece will be on and where check HERE

The funding means a book about the work will be made in 2020 too.

If you saw the work in 2018, please tell your friends to come along! And if you wanted to see it but missed it, now's your chance.

Photo by Paul Samuel White

Slow Story Slide Show at IBT Summit in October

Sheila is pleased to be sharing Slow Story Slide Show at the In Between Time Summit in Bristol in October…

Further details HERE and below:

“It takes around 8 minutes for light from the sun to travel 96 million miles to reach our bodies. In just one second light can circle the earth 7 times. Yet, still… How long does it take to see something? To really see it?”

Slow Story Slide Show is an invitation to spend 15 minutes engaging in some slow looking and listening. A chance to take some time out and consider what (or whom) it is that you perhaps wouldn’t ordinarily notice…

10 participants at a time listen to a story about light whilst viewing a series of slides through desktop slide-viewers. Each slide is an image carefully selected from the Wellcome Collection picture library. The piece draws connections between Science and Art, intertwining them into a meditative story, carefully installed on a table top.

This event is part of the In Between Time Summit Day 3 programme. The event is included in the 1-Day Ticket or 3-Day Summit Pass and cannot be booked separately.

Photo of Slow Story Slide Show at Wellcome Collection by Lucy Cash

New project for Peterborough Presents...

Sheila has been invited by Peterborough Presents to work with several groups of residents from Peterborough’s Bretton Estate to make something new. The work begins on September 2nd.

Watch this space for more information as the project unfolds…