Overview
A simultaneity of stories-so-far was an exhibition of sound, video and writing by artists Lucy Reynolds, Navi Kaur and Holly Argent. Curated by Laura Onions and Alice O’Rourke, the project re-considered acts of gathering and articulating collective stories. Cultivated during the year leading up to the exhibition date, stories-so-far brought attention to how place is given resonance through joined together voices.
Stemming from Grand Union’s 10th year anniversary, each contribution to the exhibition offered propositions for locating, reflecting, pausing and appreciating how we become mapped into places overtime. Taken up in feminist literature, the figure of the map stands for past rigidities that could also be reworked from within, open to the fragments, incoherences and connections yet to be made. “Perhaps we could imagine space as a simultaneity of stories-so-far” a thought from geographer Doreen Massey in her book ‘For Space’ which encourages a thinking of space as a result of interrelations between people and place. By working with people and stories – as opposed to conventional archival objects – this exhibition acted as a marker of our existence and a method of making ourselves and others more visible.
We commissioned artist and Grand Union studio holder, Liu Mengxia, to produce an illustration to capture ‘a simultaneity of stories-so-far’. In her own words, she said:
“When I accepted this commission, I had a special empathy. This is the tenth year of GU, and there will be countless wonderful ten years in the future. I mapped out the story of growth of my own art career alongside the story of growth for GU. I believe there are similarities in these growing processes. I divided the growing process into three periods.
I used the shape of an inverted triangle to conceive the whole story. There is an old Chinese saying, that “everything is hard at the beginning.” At the bottom of the image, I used a grid of very hard lines to form an equilateral triangle, to stimulate the imagination of the initial stage of growth, a description of the first step to achieve the ideal in a calm and down-to-earth manner.
When we do our jobs very well, we will always receive opportunities, and that helps us to grow quickly. Then, we jump out of the triangle, rising up to a soft square, and the dark green brushstrokes walk in this vigorously. Growing self-doubt will make us stop occasionally, but it will not let us give up. The green hope leads us to break through the difficulties of self, and finally grow.
This is also the ten-year story of growth for GU. I believe that the stories of the next innumerable ten years will all walk in the expanding pink eclipse, full of confidence and infinite yearning for the future.”
Holly Argent
Holly Argent’s project After the event: Activities with archives expands a field of enquiry in relation to using archives to interrogate standard systems of organisation and explore methodologies that re-negotiate narratives and prioritise forms of self-preservation.
Upon the occasion of Grand Union’s 10 year anniversary (2020) and in dialogue with members of Grand Union and it’s core community, Argent has produced a handbook ‘After the event: Activities with archives’ as a means to share a series of propositions directly addressing the question, ‘what happens when the archive becomes our own domain?’
In opposition to defined notions of heritage and arts production which exclude or make it difficult to archive and care for the intangible and the unrecorded stories integral to the existence of art spaces like Grand Union; The unseen labour, the relationships, ideas, projects that didn’t happen, small talk, meetings, decisions and severed ties, that risk getting hidden or erased if uncared for. Institutional archives and collections favour simple catalogues; one dominant narrative and now more so than ever before, have objectives of repatriation to fulfil. As an alternative approach, the handbook ‘Activities with archives’ split into four distinct sections implements four types of activity: accumulate, read, map and index, to guide a process of debate and discussion: what goes in and out of the archive; how can we chart shifting non-linear narratives stemming from the archive, and how can the archive inform and guide a future programme? Figures such as Rebecca Solnit, the poet Adrienne Rich and artist Zofia Kulik, as well as Argent’s previous projects and workshops both at Grand Union (March 2020) and with the Women Artists of the North East Library shape a set of experimental instructions untethered from traditional methods of research and archive making.
In Spring 2021, Grand Union’s gallery will become a public site to open up and interrupt the archive and become a site to make donations. Mirroring the structure of the handbook, four mobile batten structures will be installed in the gallery to host materials drawn from Grand Union’s archive and underpin a programme.
Holly Argent is an artist and researcher based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Her work is interested in creating contexts and perspectives for exploring artistic legacies and conflicting histories. Often working with archives and ostensibly unrelated materials, she is always looking to reconfigure and emphasise a subjective position to reflect or expand upon complex autobiographical narratives. This work can take shape as performance, text, sculpture and film. She founded and leads the Women Artists of the North East Library (2017-) and is the 2021 BALTIC Bothy artist in residence on the Isle of Eigg, Scotland.
Navi Kaur
Mērā Ghar by Navi Kaur consisted of a single-channel video installation screened within a gestural structure within Grand Union. Directly translated into English from Punjabi as ‘my home,’ Mērā Ghar simultaneously replicated notions of Navi’s grandparent’s family home, their allotment and the Gurdwara (Sikh temple and place of worship). These three environments encapsulate Sikh teachings of Seva (selflessly serving humanity), maintaining a life of Chardi Kala (high spirits, positive outlook) and living by honest labour.
Over a ten year period, Navi collated an extensive archive of digital images; videos; family albums; and sentimental keepsakes which embodied the personal journey she has taken to understanding more about her community and, familial connections – and how these two things link to the topographies of her ancestral land. Mērā Ghar presented intimate footage of family, faith and food shot during meal times and prayer times affording the viewer an insight into Navi’s grandparents’ selfless and modest lives. The work explored the sacred and interconnected nature of spaces such as the home, the land and the Gurdwara for Sikh communities, revealing the ritualistic nature of the quotidian and drawing parallels between the care, love and discipline employed when cooking, gardening and reciting prayers.
Sikh teachings focus on the importance of a balanced and humble lifestyle, encouraging people to share the land’s resources fairly and equally, ensuring everyone, regardless of status, has access to clean water and food. This is commonly known as ‘Langar’; the act of serving humanity with no expectation of receiving anything in return.Navi’s work traces stories of family members in the Punjab, her grandparent’s migration to the UK in the 1960s and their lives here since, contrasted with her experiences as a young Sikh woman growing up in Britain.
Mērā Ghar was a commissioned work supported by Grand Union, Human Libraries and Elephant Trust. Considering how places are not enclosures with a clear inside and outside, this work connected to Grand Union’s wider thinking about growing structures in Birmingham. We have co-commissioned Navi with Liverpool based organisation Human Libraries and the Elephant Trust to develop this new body of research, along with a limited edition recipe card made in collaboration with artist Sumuyya Khader.
Navi Kaur is an artist and arts educator based in Birmingham, UK. Inspired by the lives of her paternal grandparents, Surinder (‘Budimom’) and Karamjit (‘Baba Ji’), Navi’s work intimately and playfully documents themes of domestic, cultural, and spiritual significance. She traces interpersonal dialogues and daily activities through digital photography, film, and installation, demonstrating the abounding resilience of first-generation immigrants, the wonders of the everyday, and the compelling expressions of the Sikh Dharam. Thus, Navi’s artistic process doubles as a method of self-inquiry, facilitating investigations into the physical and intangible dimensions of her cultural heritage.
Navi is currently researching and documenting the lives of the South Asian communities who have settled and work in the rural West Midlands for a photographic series commissioned by GRAIN Projects. She has exhibited her work across the UK and overseas, including Reminders Photography Stronghold, Coventry Biennial, Manchester Contemporary, Recent Activity, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, ORT Gallery and Gallery Celine. Navi is also a qualified arts educator, who teaches Art and Design at a Handsworth-based secondary school and facilitates workshops in artist-led and museum spaces.
Written by Harr-Joht Takhar.
lucy reynolds
Audio and text based work A Tender Map/A Feminist Chorus by Lucy Reynolds plotted the creative geography of Grand Union. The Tender Map/A Feminist Chorus was mapped through the spoken and written word, embodied in the people and the creative activities of the Grand Union building at Minerva works. Painted across the walls of the gallery, on the GU windows and on the billboards by the canal, and as installed sound works, descriptions of its spaces by those who use them, became a way to navigate them in the imagination, acting as a repository of the creative energies within Grand Union. Sent as sound files and word docs, walks around studios, workshops, gardens, galleries, kitchens became a way of entering and honouring those spaces and the art being made within them, during a time when speaking together and entering public spaces was not possible.
Tender Map/A Feminist Chorus was part of a wider project, A Feminist Chorus, which explored whether the feminist concept of collectivity associated to the Women’s movement in the 1970s might still have resonance for contemporary feminist art making. Previous choruses have invited speakers in different settings to lift the texts of women both iconic and forgotten off the page through their voices, embodying with pride women’s marginalised and dispersed history in the contemporary moment.
Created by artist and designer Rose Nordin, the loose leaf score for Tender Map/A Feminist Chorus functioned as a deconstructed publication, allowing for movement, reordering and remapping of the words. Evoking earlier feminist ‘mail art’ projects, it fit into an A5 envelope for sending through the post.
Chorus Contributors: Jo Capper, Kirsty Clarke, Cheryl Jones, Kim McAleese, Laura Onions, Alice O’Rourke, Sarah Baker-Groves, Mike Dring, Amelia Hawk, Sophie Huckfield, Joanne Masding, Liu Mengxia, Sarah Taylor-Silverwood, Nilupa Yasmin, Carolyn Morton, John, Malik, Matt Cox, Mohammed, New, Leah Carless, Mark Essen, Laurie Ramsell.
Lucy Reynolds makes art and writes about feminism, political space, moving image and collective practice. As an artist, her films and installations have been presented in galleries and cinemas internationally, and her ongoing sound work A Feminist Chorus has been heard at the Glasgow International Festival, the Wysing Arts Centre, the Showroom and The Grand Action cinema, Paris. She co-ordinates the PhD programme for the Centre for Research in Education, Art and Media (CREAM) at the University of Westminster, and runs the MRES in Creative Practice. She is editor of the anthology Women Artists, Feminism and the Moving Image, and co-editor of the Moving Image Review and Art Journal (MIRAJ).
EXHIBITION IMAGES
