Monsoonal Multiplicities Digital Residency

During March 2021, Sheila is resident artist in Monsoonal Multiplicities - a virtual exhibition - alongside Feedback Theatre and Naiza Khan. All three artists will be applying their research practices to the question ‘How is London a Monsoonal City?’ The process will be documented by the artists themselves and Hydar Dewachi, a filmmaker, and result in four short videos and posts for the Monsoon Assemblages Instagram feed.

A Programme of Events will also accompany the exhibition.

Click HERE for further information.

Monsoonal Multiplicities is an exhibition of work arising from a five-year engagement with the monsoon in India, Bangladesh, London and Myanmar by the European Research Council funded project, Monsoon Assemblages. It offers visitors a virtual experience of the monsoon by following stories of entangled beings, energies, infrastructures, life-worlds, matters, technologies and knowledge practices and their mobilisation by colonial and neo-colonial agendas.

City at night

Performance in an Age of Precarity: Book Launch

To coincide with the publication of their first anthology of essays on contemporary performance, Andy Field and Maddy Costa bring together a collection of the artists they write about in the book to talk about performances they themselves have seen and loved in the past decade.

Featuring Alexandrina Hemsley, Augusto Corrieri, Ellice Stevens (Breach Theatre), Jemima Yong, Rachel Mars, Rachel Porter (Figs in Wigs), Sheila Ghelani and Tim Crouch.

This event will be not just a book launch but a celebration of the effect live performance has on us, and continues to have, even when theatres are closed.

Published on 11 February 2021, Performance in an Age of Precarity is a new anthology of 40 short essays, each on the work of a different artist, through which Andy and Maddy sketch a map of the contemporary performance landscape in the UK in the period between the financial crisis of 2008 and the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020.

“This magical book is a love letter to the artists whose imagination and cleverness transport us and unite us, and to the beauty and fragility of their performance. When I read it I feel like I am constantly on the joyful edge of falling in love, trying so hard to keep hold of the feelings evoked. A very precious book in our precarious times.”

Vicky Featherstone, artistic director, Royal Court

Conversations Over A Brew: Season 1, Episode 3

Listen to Sheila chatting with artist Claire Weetman as part of the Heart of Glass Podcast series Conversations Over A Brew.

Further details below:

Conversations Over A Brew: Season 1, Episode 3

15th Dec 2020

An intimate chat (recorded over a brew) between artists Claire Weetman and Sheila Ghelani, both long term Heart of Glass collaborators.

Claire is a founding steering group member of Heart of Glass, and has been with us since the very beginning. Currently she is working with us on a project with refugee and asylum seeking women. Sheila is a frequent collaborator and all round good egg, she has been working with us on a project with young people from St Helens Carers Centre.

In their warm conversation the artists explore the parallels between their work and, what it means to be an artist working in a community setting. They talk about, the challenges and setbacks of working through a pandemic and whether art and its ‘weird magic’ can or should change the world.

Before they chatted, Sheila and Claire mailed out packages to each other. Both artists had used care packages as a way to connect with the groups during the pandemic (scroll down to read more). We listen as they unwrap their packages and talk about the objects inside - how they chose them, their symbolism and meaning and their hopes for how they might offer a moment of care and reflection to the individuals who received them. 

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE HERE

(Shout out to the amazing volunteers and organisations who supported them through the process including St Helens Carers Centre, Refugee Women Connect).

Mixed Feelings workshop

Sheila is leading a Clod Ensemble Reboot in December. Further details below:

Mixed Feelings
with Sheila Ghelani
Thursday 3 December, 5:30pm – 6:45pm
Register here

Join artist Sheila Ghelani for a workshop exploring being mixed – mixed identity, mixed discipline, mixed up. At a time when making any of art kind can feel more complex than ever before, Sheila will share some of the rationale, strategies and approaches to making her own work.

In Other Words - a book!

Sheila is really pleased to be a contributing artist to In Other Words  a new book commissioned by Metal:

In Other Words  is a collection of urgent reflections, created by 49 artists over 4 months in 2020 exploring their hopes and fears for the future at a time of global crisis.  Through prose, poetry, drawing, collage and photography it is a clarion call for change from a diverse group rich in wisdom, shared experience, and what it means to be marginalised in the UK.

The book was devised at the start of the Covid -19 pandemic in the UK, and was initially inspired by an Arundhati Roy quote in April 2020.

“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred … or we can walk through lightly, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”

In this moment of huge unknowing and isolation, arts organisation Metal and their Associate Producer, disabled dance artist and academic Kate Marsh recognised that for many of the artists they were working with – (d)Deaf and disabled, working class, LGBTQIA*, and those experiencing racism –  the idea of ‘getting back to normal’ post Covid-19 was a loaded and exclusive concept.

The resulting publication is a beautiful collection of images and words. Commissioned by Metal and published in partnership with Live Art Development Agency (LADA) it brings together artists working across the performing, literary and visual arts to share their hopes and fears for the future. Contributors explore isolation, longing, gender identity, racism, family bonds, government guidelines, mental health, and ableism amongst many others.

To find out more or buy a copy click HERE

Artist in Residence - Institute of Place

Sheila is currently Artist in Residence at University of Winchester’s Institute of Place. Whilst in residence Sheila will explore the theme of Displacement:

Institute of Place: Dis-placed

As we experience being locked down, socially distanced, in a bubble or socially isolated, in the last eight months, we may have felt, at times, displaced?  And it is not just us. Are new ideas and ways  displacing the old? How does an artist begin with feelings and imaginations of displacement? In which direction does one move and at what speed and care? Can one get back? Where is the new (ab)normal? 

How can ideas and experiences around the dis-placed, provoke artistic work and research in each of our different places.

Image Credit: Sheila Ghelani

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