Celebrating the opening weekend of ‘Sonia Boyce. Improvise with what we have,’ the gallery’s first major solo exhibition with distinguished British artist Sonia Boyce DBE RA, please join us for a lecture by the artist that charts some of her ongoing interests in the debates around the decorative in visual art, dance and sound as social interaction, and the known and the speculative.

Drawing on early modernist discussions about the excesses of ornamentation, Boyce interweaves recent critiques on the subject to situate her relationship with repeat pattern.

Similarly, early twentieth-century concerns about cross-cultural assembling and the impact of Jazz music in Europe (with continuing tropes about the spectre of dance and electronic music gatherings at the end of the twentieth-century and into the twenty-first), provides the backdrop to the artist’s interest in Roy DeCarava’s photograph ‘Dancers, New York’ (1956) and Adrian Piper’s ‘Funk Lessons: A Collaborative Experiment in Transcultural Fusion’ (1983). To quote from what writer and DJ Luis Manuel García-Mispireta calls ‘stranger-intimacy’ on the dance floor, Boyce will talk about these influences on her new body of work ‘Silent Disco.’

A very different type of ‘stranger-intimacy’ can be understood in ‘Carmen,’ the multi-channel video portrait of Guyanese British actress Carmen Munroe, which asks what it means to be known and overlooked at the same time. And, within the realm of multi-screen video installations, the enigma for the gallery-goer who must negotiate conflicting visual codes.

This event is free, however, space is limited and reservations are required.
Click here to register. 

About ‘Sonia Boyce. Improvise with what we have’ 
For her first exhibition with Hauser & Wirth, Sonia Boyce DBE RA will present two new films. Inspired by Roy DeCarava’s ‘Dancers, New York’ (1956) and Adrian Piper’s ‘Funk Lessons’ (1983), two groundbreaking artists who centered Black culture, Boyce’s first film weaves together footage captured at a silent disco—a paradoxically hushed event, in which a roomful of dancers respond to music played over personal headphone sets. A key subject in Boyce’s latest body of work, the silent disco is not a party, but rather a framework for close listening, improvisation and collective performance. Boyce has taken still images from her film and arranged them into kaleidoscopic patterns to create wallpaper installations within the exhibition space, eroding distinctions between the artwork and its means of production and display. The second film on view delves into the life and career of trailblazing Guyanese British actress Carmen Munroe, who reshaped assumptions about Black life in the UK through her performances in West End plays such as Lorraine Hansberry’s ‘A Raisin in the Sun,’ and her roles in popular television programs including ‘Doctor Who: The Enemy of the World’ (1967 – 1968) and ‘The Persuaders’ (1971 – 1972). Part portrait, part historical document, Boyce’s film traces Munroe’s impact as an artist and activist.