Art Night will celebrate its fifth edition by taking place in locations across the United Kingdom for the first time this summer and coming to Scotland.
Transforming iconic and unexpected public spaces within London since 2016, Art Night 2021, curated by Helen Nisbet (Shetland, London), will stretch 1000+ miles across Scotland, England and Wales, from North to South and East to West as well as even further digitally and physically for international audiences. For the first time Art Night – will also take place for a month, allowing audiences the opportunity to access commissions, performances and interventions in rural locales, towns and cities as well as from home.
Guerrilla Girls biggest UK public commission to date, The Male Graze will be part of Art Night 2021. The commission includes a website, online gig and national series of billboards – including in Dundee and Glasgow, in partnership with Dundee Contemporary Arts and Glasgow Women’s Library
The Guerrilla Girls (est.1985) in New York live and work in LA and New York. The group employs culture jamming in the form of posters, books, billboards, and public appearances to expose discrimination and corruption. Recent projects include Kochi Biennial, India (2019); Beyond the Streets – New York and LA (2018); Museu de Arte Sao Paolo (2018); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2017) and Tate Modern, London (2016).
This major outdoor work will also manifest as a series of billboards across the UK including, Eastbourne, Birmingham, Cardiff, Swansea, Leeds, Warwick, and more. The billboards will be on display from 18 June to 18 July.
Scottish and Barbadian Alberta Whittle will make and present a new film, Holding the Line, which will be broadcast at the end of the festival. She will also give a performance at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge. There will also be a screening programme of Alberta’s films in Abergavenny train station, Wales in partnership with Peak and at KLA ART produced by 32° East in Uganda.
Helen Nisbet, Artistic Director, Art Night:
It has always been my ambition to bring Art Night to venues outside London. I’m from Scotland and still work a lot here so it was clear and important that the first foray outside London would include Scotland. I started working with ATLAS on the development of Isabel Lewis’ commission in mid-2019 and spent lots of time getting to know Skye and the beautiful Braes area where her work will focus. I’m from a small island in Shetland, and so Braes Village Hall felt very familiar to me. Alongside ATLAS I’m so happy to be working with two of my favourite organisations – Dundee Contemporary Arts and Glasgow Women’s Library as host partners for the Guerrilla Girls commission
Further amplifying Art Night’s reach for long term London fans of the festival and those further afield, a series of performances and works will be broadcast during the festival dates.
Across London during the festival collaborative art publishing practice OOMK (One of My Kind) will create an artwork which will be distributed across the city. The work consists of the design and distribution of “STUART Papers” a highly visual newspaper that reflects thematically on selected texts and archived ephemera from the Stuart Hall Library at INIVA and connects to contemporary collectives though responsive content. The project will be active across multiple locations in London, including on the Northbank.
At Platfform 2, a new project space at Abergavenny train station in Wales, there will be a screening programme of works by Alberta Whittle in partnership with Peak. A parallel screening programme will also take place concurrently at KLA ART produced by 32° East in Uganda on 15 July and at CCA Derry~Londonderry, from 6-17 July.
Meanwhile, Isabel Lewis has developed a major new Art Night commission – What can we learn about love from lichen? – taking place in the Scottish Isle of Skye. A co-commission between Art Night and ATLAS Arts, Lewis is working with collaborators in Skye to choreograph a series of guided walks brought together in a final ‘hosted occasion’, tuning the ears, eyes and the body to more sensuous forms of knowing and being together. 16-20 June.
In partnership with Compton Verney in Warwickshire, Isabel Lewis will draw on these choreographic scores to stage a new sound work with guided tuning exercises and this will run for the duration of Art Night. Supported by Goethe-Institut. From 18 June, accessed by booking in advance via the Compton Verney website.
The series of commissions that unfold across the month online will take place as follows below, including a marathon broadcast of all online film works created in a broadcast partnership with Somerset House across the evening of 15 July. The London commissions are anchored on the Northbank of the capital but will be available to a global audience. All other broadcasts will be available for 48 hours after the broadcast date on Art Night’s website, launching every Tuesday and Friday during the festival period at 8pm BST.
Alberta Whittle will make a major new commission expanding on Holding the Line, her short film shown as part of Art Night’s Trailers programme. The work will look at colonial histories and police brutality to consider our relationship to current ecological and political climates. Alongside her new film for Art Night, Whittle will also present a new performance at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, in partnership with the New Hall Art Collection on the 8 July. Incorporating sound and movement this outdoor performance will focus on ideas of rebellion, love and oceans. To be broadcast 18 June.
With support from Broadway’s Near Now and Wysing Arts Centre Adham Faramawy will present a new commission for Art Night: The heart wants what the heart wants. The film continues their research into identity, bodies, desire and queering ideas of the natural. This work will explore our entanglement with each other and the multispecies ecology we live within. To be broadcast on 25 June.
Working with bioacoustics, biological time and electromagnetism, Philomène Pirecki will broadcast a new video exploring the ephemerality of intense sensory states, recorded at the newly launched 180 Studios at 180 The Strand and offsite locations. To be broadcast 29 June on Art Night and Somerset House channels.
Award-winning dancer and choreographer Oona Doherty is working with filmmaker Luca Truffarelli, dancer Ryan O’Neill and 2021 hunter Sati Veysseres to produce a new film work – Hunter Filmed – in Belfast, her home city. The film moves between city streets and family homes, interlaced with poetry written by Doherty and O’Neill. To be broadcast 2 July on Art Night and 180 Strand channels.
Turner Prize winner Mark Leckey will present a new work where looped YouTube footage of a young man jumping through the glass window of a bus stop is augmented by an acrobat re-enacting the same action as they are flashed by a brilliant light. Recorded at 180 Studios at 180 The Strand. To be broadcast 9 July on Art Night and 180 Strand channels.
Sonya Dyer will present a new moving image work which extends Hailing Frequencies Open, her ongoing body of work exploring Greek mythology, Speculative fiction and Space travel. HeLa cells, having travelled to the Andromeda galaxy (2.5 million light years from Earth), make contact with our planet via morse code refracted through the rhythms of African diasporic drumming practices. For Art Night, Dyer reimagines the story of Andromeda – the Aethiopian princess of Greek myth – across time and Space. To be broadcast 13 July on Art Night and Somerset House channels.
Imran Perretta and Paul Purgas will present a new work featuring a pre-recorded performance accompanied by Carnatic dance and vocal improvisation to explore diasporic echoes, syncretic mythologies and polyrhythm within South Asian consciousness. To be broadcast on 14 July on Somerset House channels and on 16 July on Art Night channels.