Event

The Instant: an evening of performance

Elettra GiuntaSincerityCourtesy the artist. Photograph by Joanna Wierzbicka. 2019

Location

Gallery

An evening of specially commissioned performance works will activate Donna Huddleston’s exhibition The Exhausted Student.

Dance artists Elettra Giunta and Leila Jassal from Siobhan Davies Young Artist Collective have each devised a unique solo movement piece in response to the visual, physical and conceptual aspects of Huddleston's work. With the gallery space providing a stage in which to perform, each piece uses the body to respond to the surrounding works in the moment, intermingling and layering the stories and memories around them in acts of instantaneous creation.
 
The evening will also include a screening of Drawing Act II – a film by Alexis Teplin made in collaboration with Charlotte Sharman Primary School. This project engages local children in varied applications of drawing – research, pattern designing, performance and costume making – weaving together different strands of Teplin’s practice and responding to elements of theatre design that underpin Huddleston's works.
 
The Exhausted Student is a solo exhibition by London based artist Donna Huddleston, featuring a new series of drawings on paper in pencil, colour and silverpoint that examine the female body and the psychology of altered states, desire and illusion, within a theatrically lit gallery environment.

Elettra Giunta is an Italian dance artist based both in London and Berlin, working in the field of contemporary dance and performance. Her practice is a hybrid of disciplines and methodologies that use the body as the main source of material to create instant composition performances, which explore the affinity between imagination, philosophy, perception, and dreams.

Leila Jassal works predominately in Contemporary dance and her choreographic practice focuses on the relationship between dance, bodies and politics. Her conversational work explores social and societal issues, specifically the way we as humans coexist with one another. She actively works in interdisciplinary ways, connecting with artists who practice a medium outside of dance and particularly in settings where dance is not normally shown.

Alexis Teplin currently has a solo show at Bluecoat, Liverpool’s centre for the contemporary arts, ‘It’s my Pleasure to Participate’ until 23rd February. She has exhibited work in London and internationally including: Nocturnal Creatures & Whitechapel Open, Whitechapel Gallery, London 2018; Arch (The Politics of Fragmentation) 20th Sydney Biennale, Sydney 2016; Costume: Written Clothing, Tramway, Glasgow, 2013.