SAM'S EDEN

1 Jul-9 Sep 2023

Overview

Michaela Razafima Nash | Suds McKenna | Yarli Allison

Curated by Thomas Wells

You are warmly invited to the launch of SAM'S EDEN, at CCA Derry~Londonderry featuring newly produced and pre-existing work by artists Yarli Allison, Suds McKenna and Michaela Razafima Nash, curated by Thomas Wells. The exhibition will investigate three different responses to the queer body occupying the physical and virtual realms, and reflect on the importance of sanctuary.

The theme of sanctuary references the need for queer bodies to seek safety in community; this is evident throughout history with physical spaces; clubs, bars, ball rooms, cottages, but also in the virtual realms through social media, online gaming and others. Queer spaces are often found in the marginalia of books, in the lyrics of music and in the symbolism of film. Queer spaces have historically been of great importance for a community often shunted from domestic and workplaces, finding solace and security elsewhere. SAM'S EDEN refers to Derek Jarman's prospect cottage - eden - based in Folkestone, England as a space of queer sanctuary for the artist and filmmaker. SAM’S EDEN began as a queer arts publication founded by Thomas Wells in Belfast in 2020; this exhibition sees the move out of printed matter into the physical realm, forming the exhibition at CCA Derry~Londonderry with new and reimagined work by Yarli Allison, Suds McKenna and Michaela Razafima Nash.

Suds McKenna is a multidisciplinary artist born in Belfast and currently based in Glasgow. Suds is part of Bonjour, a club and community space in Glasgow that prioritises underrepresented groups in the LGBTQ+ community. Suds developed the work shown in SAM’S EDEN following their participation in the Array Collective workshops during the CCA Derry~Londonderry & UK New Artist Weekender in 2022. This work was originally shown in the exhibition a familiar plough into the knot of a tie at Intermedia Gallery at CCA Glasgow and is reimagined for the exhibition at CCA.

Artist Michaela Razafima Nash will reflect on their contribution to issue 1 of SAM’S EDEN - a collaborative essay in the form of half interview and half creative writing with Yarli Allison, framed around their shared experiences and referencing the queer body as a propagated flower through their history of migration. Michaela presents a new work, creating an archipelago made using pigments developed from rock and mineral samples. This work refers to the timeless experience and collective nature of the queer community globally. Michaela’s practice intersects visual art and writing as they explore the queer body in time and geography in particular across the island of Ireland.

Artist Yarli Allison is based between the UK and Hong Kong and builds upon experiences of displacements, composing ‘what-ifs’ fictitious scenarios as methodological playgrounds that explore “how humans/things live” in utopia/dystopia systems. These speculative worlds seem hopeful and functional, yet are on the verge of falling apart: either lurking with mythological creatures or personas striving to survive in absurd conditions, or consisting of Yarli’s invented coping mechanisms that futilely heal collective grief. Themes in Yarli’s work include digital humanities, border systems, datafication are explored, along with skinships and affect, powered by thought processes such as queering history, belonging remapping, cognitive restructuring and emotional geography studies.

This exhibition is a legacy project of Jerwood Curatorial Accelerator, a curatorial and leadership development programme for UK-based visual arts curators from working class/low socio-economic backgrounds that CCA was a host organisation for in 2022/23.