That Fire Over There
Prem Sahib  |
That Fire Over There takes fire as a metaphor for ideas around queer attachment, proximity, and personal and collective transformation. It also excavates the history of a real fire which in 1981 destroyed the Hambrough Tavern – a contested site symbolic of provocation and conflict against far-right groups in Southall, west London, where Prem Sahib grew up.
A rich body of images – documenting artworks which explore gay cruising, selected from family photo collections, and displaying ephemera from the archive of Prem Sahib’s uncle Kamaljit Sahib, a notable activist in Southall of the 1980s and 90s – combines with extracts from a dream diary and exchanges with family members. Added to this are newly commissioned texts and correspondence by Sita Balani, Milovan Farronato, Reba Maybury and Ashkan Sepahvand, engaging with emotional themes such as grief, shame and loss. Prem Sahib’s own writing makes connections between interlocutors and carves out a space for otherwise disparate material to coexist, all in the pursuit of questioning ideas around freedom, sexuality, and intergenerational experiences of place and politics.
The work of Prem Sahib embodies a poetic and provocative “destabilised minimalism”. It references the architecture of public and private spaces, structures that shape individual and communal identities, senses of belonging, alienation and confinement. Mixing the personal and political, abstraction and figuration, Sahib’s formalism is suggestive of the body as well as its absence, drawing attention to traces of touch and frameworks of looking.
This publication expands on a series of three exhibitions made by Prem Sahib, collectively titled Descent and shown at Southard Reid Gallery in 2019–20. Descent is i. People Come & Go; ii. Cul de Sac; iii. Man Dog; and now, iv. That Fire Over There.
Prem Sahib’s work has been shown widely including solo institutional exhibitions Balconies, Kunstverein Hamburg, 2017 and Side On, ICA London, 2015, as well in group shows at spaces that include Sharjah Art Foundation, Migros Museum, Whitechapel Gallery, Hayward Gallery, KW Institute of Art, Des Moines Art Centre and the Gwangju Biennale. Their work is in the collections of Tate, The Arts Council, Government Art Collection, UK, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Norway, and MONA, Australia.
|
TONIGHT! Violence & the Senses: Other Reflexes launch
Burley Fisher Books
Thurs June 1, 2023, 6.30–8.30pm
Free but book a place here.
Join us for the launch of Other Reflexes, the debut novel by Diana Georgiou. Published by Book Works as part of the Interstices series, it was recently included in frieze magazine’s ‘What to Read This Spring’ feature.
Diana Georgiou and Interstices Editor Bridget Penney will be in conversation with Book Works Editor, Lizzie Homersham, to talk about the process of writing during the pandemic, the importance of open calls and editorial support for new writers, and the complexities of writing about violence and the senses.
|
|
|
June Book(s) of the Month: The Time Machine
Our book of the month for June is in fact a series – three experimental works commissioned by Francesco Pedraglio as part of The Time Machine, a 2012 Book Works series.
The Time Machine asks us to forget about archives and embrace the confusion of the present, in order to consciously experiment with all our imaginable histories and expected futures. The three commissioned works are:
Get them now for just £5 each (30% off).
|
|
|
New Maya Balcioglu solo show now open at Lungley Gallery
25 May–8 July 2023
Lungley Gallery
53 Great Portland Street
London, W1W 7LG
Second floor
Currently open at the Lungley Gallery is KATABASIS: journey to the underworld, a solo exhibition by Maya Balcioglu. Maya Balcioglu is a contributor to The Stuart Brisley Interviews: Performance and its Afterlives, published by Book Works in 2020.
The gallery will have special extended hours this weekend as part of London Gallery Weekend. For full opening times, further information and texts relating to the exhibition, visit the Lungley Gallery website.
|
|
|
Join our Readers Club and receive every new publication as soon as it is released!
£5/Month or £50/Year
Sign up to the Readers Club in June and receive That Fire Over There by Prem Sahib as the first book in your subscription.
|
