‘ACall’ Festival: Netil360 hosts immersive art trail by Sons of Craft and Eat Work Art
This November, Sons of Craft and Eat Work Art have partnered to present ACall. Running from 17 - 21 November 2021, this event is an immersive art trail spanning multiple locations across E8, including Hackney Downs Studios, downmarket_, Netil House and Netil360, and will include workshops, talks, public installations and radio sessions across these locations. At the heart of ACall will be a multidisciplinary exhibition, Touch: The Politics of Physicality.
Netil360 will house sonic installations by Mohammed Rowe and Gisou Gilshani, sculptural installations from Yingming Chen and Emily Thomas, and fabric installations from Katrine Skovsgaard and Ayo Ogundayo.
You can also listen to their recent Netil Radio show here. Hosted by curator, Louis Chapple, and Sons of Craft director Demigosh, the show features a number of artists exhibiting at the festival as they discuss ‘Touch: The Politics of Physicality’.
Admission to the exhibition will be FREE. Pre-booking is required. RSVP via this link.
Read on to find out more about the festival and its exhibiting artists.
Enam Gbewonyo, The Empire has new clothes, a history rewritten in the Black II, 2021
ACall showcases the work of a diverse line-up of emerging artists with a stance that is decidedly anti-establishment, offering a grassroots alternative to the elite hyper-commercialised art world that descends upon central London during Frieze week, which ACall intentionally directly proceeds.
Placing artworks publicly within local London communities, ACall seeks to highlight and support the best emerging talent across the arts, as well as making this presentation as accessible and inclusive as possible. The broad range of locations mean that installations will be visible to a range of spectators, those who have consciously chosen to view art and those who have not: from frequent gallery goers to commuters on their trains home.
Curated by Louis Chapple, founder of the nomadic gallery Studio Chapple, the artworks featured in Touch: The Politics of Physicality are united through the way in which they re-engage the viewer with a sense of physicality, both through textile installations, and through painterly and photographic representations that evoke the interaction between fabric and skin. Furthermore, sound art installations serve to ground the viewer in the various spaces the exhibition manifests itself in, exploring the textural physicality of sound. The experience of Touch: The Politics of Physicality is immersive and holistic, the artworks imploring the viewer to engage all their senses and consider the concept of physicality in a manner which is both concrete and abstract.
The exhibition features artworks by Callum Eaton, a painter of modern life whose works subvert expectations of what oil painting should be; Tayo Adekunle, whose photographic practice focuses on the commodification, fetishization and sexualisation of the black female body; and Hoa Dung Clerget who creates ‘disappearing objects’ in order to explore memory and temporality.
ACall is sponsored by Ace+Freak. Ace+Freak will be sponsoring Sons of Craft to produce seven original NFTs to be raffled off as part of the exhibition, as well as creating a line of limited edition can designs in order to further showcase the artworks of those featured.
Enorê - Untitled
Featured artists for ACall are:
A recent Goldsmiths graduate, Callum Eaton uses the historic painterly language of realism to subvert our expectations of what an oil painting should, or indeed can be. He paints quotidian objects as well as members of his own community, which often leave expectations unfulfilled, posing the question ‘why bother?’ Yet, Eaton strives to unearth a raw clarity within everyday objects, celebrating the overlooked and disregarded. Eaton has recently moved back to his hometown of Bath, where he continues to paint the unrecognisable yet irreplaceable people of his community.
Edinburgh-based photographer Tayo Adekunle works predominantly with self-portraiture, their work centred around reworkings of historical tropes related to the black female body. Referencing canonical paintings and sculptures from art history, as well 19th century colonial photography in her contemporary practice, Adekunle explores the relationship between the treatment of the black female body in the past, and its treatment in the present day. Asking questions of commodification, fetishization and sexualisation of the black female body, Adekunle uses self-portraiture so as not to exploit the bodies of others in the manner that her source material did.
London-based artist Gal Leshem creates socially engaged works centered around the significance of history and collective memory within the construction of local identities. She has recently exhibited works at Huxley Parlour Gallery, San Mei Gallery, and the Jerusalem Film Festival. Lesham was part of Bloomberg’s New Contemporaries in 2018, as well as working as artist in residence at the Tate Modern and Tate Britain School Workshop Programme in 2017. She is set to complete her MA in Fine Art Media at the Slade in 2022.
Hoa Dung Clerget uses a variety of media to reflect different temporal experiences, what the artist calls ‘disappearing objects’: carbon paper is used to represent the ruins of a memory; the words of childhood folk poems are erased to leave only the music that accompanied them. Clerget seeks to keep only a trace of something in their works, however fleeting this may be. Clerget’s practice is informed by the Vietnamese diaspora, as well as their education in France, exploring hybridity and transformation.
Atari Kuggah’s practice is primarily autobiographical, reflecting his own complex identity as a Nigerian man today. Responding to the violence he faced during his formative years, Kuggah uses draughtsmanship to draw a line through colonial violence. Latex is a significant material for Kuggah, who uses this substance as a metaphorical extension of his skin and identity, open to manipulation in manifold ways. His works comment on stereotypes associated with black men, his practice also commenting on hypermasculinity and violence. [By Defne Oruc]
Mohammed Rowe [aka Tekfis (EP)] is a London-based sound artist. His works use found sound as well as experimental and improvised music. Rowe uses a variety of recording techniques in order to capture and then form his compositions. Collaborations with other artists have seen Rowe’s sound pieces incorporated into interactive installations, as well as moving image and theatre performances. Such collaborations hugely enrich his own approach.
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Enorê is an artist currently based in London whose work revolves around the fluidity of digital media. Their practice explores the modes of translation that arise from digital media usage, particularly the ways in which the body processes information. Enorê produces digital objects and 3D scanned data to bring into the physical that which typically can only be understood and mediated within the digital realm. In turn, they recontextualise the relationship between the digital and the body.
British Ghanaian artist and curator Enam Gbewonyo’s practice investigates identity, womanhood, and humanity through the mediums of textiles and performance. Gbewonyo advocates the spiritual, healing power of handcraft, utilising processes like embroidery, knit, weave, print and wirework. With her work, Gbewonyo seeks to deliver the collective consciousness to a positive place of awareness by creating live spaces of healing. Using craft as her portal she pushes us to face the truth of a dark global history and the emotions it brings forth.
Danish artist, co-creator, workshop facilitator and collaborator Katrine Skovsgaard is interested in the spaces between us, how we share or, more often, do not. Her practice investigates ways to reveal subjective sensory experience, especially those personal experiences we do not talk about and those we do not notice. Her research is located at the crossroads of shame, chronic pain, sharing and mutual radical care, and she often works with others to find new languages for experiences.
Katrine Skovsgaard - Hold
Editors’ Notes:
Sons of Craft
Established in 2020, Sons of Craft are a design lab dedicated to disrupting and revising the concept of craft. Sons of Craft work in a variety of mediums, collaborating with creatives who share a similar admiration for craftsmanship, operating at the intersection of innovation and heritage. Sons of Craft offer a variety of services, recent commissions ranging from creative consultancy, to product and event design, to video production. The facets to their brand are numerous, Sons of craft consisting of: Off World, their ceremonial events series for creative energies, Omo Autem Artis, their slow and seasonless tailoring house for one off garments, and Sounds of Craft, a conceptual mix series and record label service.
Studio Chapple
Louis Chapple is a curator and writer from London. In 2019, he founded Studio Chapple, a roaming gallery and curatorial platform working primarily with emerging graduate artists based in the UK. Studio Chapple seeks to dismantle an ever-growing exclusivity associated with the art world by fostering close relationships between artists and collectors, and acts as a stepping stone into the commercial sector for recent graduate artists. The platform is unrestricted by a permanent gallery space, and thus inhabits a nomadic lifestyle; the gallery is soon to host a series of pop-up exhibitions in different locations across the UK, where the curatorial and the commercial will coexist. Studio Chapple is committed to highlighting the practice of underrepresented artists, whilst giving collectors a chance to engage with the next generation of contemporary artists before they are out of reach.
Eat Work Art
Founded in 2009, Eat Work Art transforms existing spaces into flourishing creative communities, inspiring a host of local creative businesses to develop and grow. Expanded across four sites; Hackney Downs Studios, Netil House in London Fields, Old Paradise Yard in Waterloo and Alma Yard in Plymouth, our communities are home to over 400 businesses operating in the creative industries.
Downmarket_, The Courtyard and Lobby Space at Hackney Downs Studios has hosted a plethora of events and exhibitions since the re-opening of London, including art exhibitions from local artists and art collectives, as well as community events. At Netil House, the Netil360 rooftop bar has established itself as an irreverent and popular evening destination with stunning views of London’s iconic skyline, and Netil Market makes space for independent grassroots creative businesses, including community-led radio station, Netil Radio.
Ace+Freak
Ace+Freak produces cocktails for a generation of drinkers who give AF. Winner of best RTD Cocktail and with nine taste medals and counting, Ace+Freak canned cocktails are made only with pressed juices, purée, and natural extracts, paired with craft spirits and blended wines. Not only this, but with every can of Ace+Freak purchased, 5p goes towards the Great Oven Charity.
