past Events:
50 WAYS TO KILL A SLUG & MORE!
Friday, November 24, 2023 - 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM
Quench Gallery is delighted to present a commissioned evening in celebration of the sticky, the slow, the sensual, the silly and the sensory, headlined by An(dre)a Spisto and Joana Nastari.
An(dre)a Spisto and Joana Nastari will be presenting 50 Ways To Kill A Slug, a queer, Latinx, neurodiverse-led, multidisciplinary, hyper-sensory performance. Celebrating radical slowness, with a sexy, ugly divergence from the unsustainable grind. 50WTKAS is a non-verbal performance piece using ASMR, pop-music and foley to highlight the rhythm of the work. The piece is punctuated by the exploration of materials relating to the slugs experience; slime, salt, coffee, beer and water. Expect queer clown deviance and lot’s and lot’s of slime.
An(dre)a Spisto
An(dre)a Spisto makes a mish mash of live theatre, art buffoonery, comedic interventions, filmed and live filmed performance with a current view into entomology, media and its relationship to perspectives as a queer, neurodiverse, Venezuelan immigrant. Trained at Lispa (Art-Haus Berlin) in Lecoq and embodied practices with a focus on clown through mask. Dre’s work has been described by critics as genre smashing, surreal, gentle and exuberant.
Work includes El Dizzy Beast (Nominated for the Filipa Braganca award), Butch Princesa (Nominated for Best Cabaret, Best Performance Artist and Best Theatre show) Tylor and Vincent:Pussy and Money, Tylor and Vincent: Now That’s What I Call Tylor and Vincent, Tylor and Vincent: Space, Miss Venezuela
Dre’s presented work at Jupiter Artland, Ugly Duck, Staffordshire Gallery, Shape Arts, The British Museum, SOHO Theatre, Brixton House Theatre, CASA Festival, Arcola Theatre, CPT and Shoreditch Town Hall. They recently collaborated with Keira Saunders on Beasts Between The Cracks, a costume and movement performance workshop at the Turner Contemporary part of OSE’s Public Programme 22-23. As creative programmes producer for the radical care organisation People United, Dre delivered We Keep Each Other Fed, Queer Zines of Care, Soft Fascination and The Sea of the Unseeable. They are currently a visiting lecturer at Mountview Academy of Performing Arts on the Theatre in Community and Education MA programme.
Joana Nastari
ana Nastari is an award-winning writer, performer, and community organiser. Currently the Oval House Theatre Associate Artist, she is best known for her debut theatre show Fuck You Pay Me, about the politics of working as a stripper in London. FYPM brought sex-work-stigma into the mainstream media in 2018 after sell-out runs in London and Edinburgh, followed by 2019 runs at The Bunker (Offie Nominated) and Arcola Theatre. Joana has had work at Soho Theatre, Southwark Platform, The Vaults, Edinburgh Fringe and Lyric Hammersmith, and CASA theatre festival. Alongside, she organises the closed community event Sleazy Virtue, for sex workers to share skills, stories and secrets.
With special guests
Nikki Sheth
Nikki Sheth is an internationally recognised sound artist and composer. Her work aims to give voice to the environment and foster a deeper connection with the natural world through field recordings, soundscape composition, spatial audio practices, multimedia installations, and sound walking. She was awarded a Sound and Music award (2020), nominated for the Phonurgia Nova Awards (2020), received an Honourable Mention for the Sound of the Year Awards (2021), nominated for Ivor Novello Composer Award (2021) and awarded a Sound and Music Seed Award for New Voices (2022). She recently collaborated on the ‘Disruptive Frequencies’ album released with Nonclassical and her debut album, ‘Sounds of Mmabolela’ was released with Flaming Pines in 2021. She is currently a Sound UK - Sound Generator Artist and an Associate Artist at Open School East.
James Jordan Johnson
James Jordan Johnson is an artist working in sound, performance and sculpture. He is interested in forms of sound collage that incorporates sampling r&b, electronic music and wind instrumentation to create new forms of sonic relationships. His most recent works includes, LATE AT TATE BRITAIN: DESIRE, CULTURE AND HISTORY( Tate Britain), In Response, Constellation of Multiple Wishes, (Mosaic Rooms) Something is Trying to Disappear Me (UGLY DUCK, Buzzcut Festival,Ark-T, Arts Admin
Into The Sea
Rosie Reed with music by Lexi Berg
09/10/22
2pm
As part of her new solo exhibition What the Water Gave Me, Rosie Reed presents a performance event. Come and listen to Lexi Berg sing live 2pm Sunday 9th October, Hodges Gap on Walpole Bay Beach as a further celebration of water. Sponsored by Beeble honey whisky which will warm us up after a group swim in the ocean!
Pink Suits perform Closet Bodies at Adult by Nature
11/08/22
Doors 7PM
Performance at 7.30PM
Closet Bodies is a new project by pink suits exploring Queer and Non Binary identities, questioning how being ‘closeted' shapes our development and our relationship to our bodies, our gender, our sexuality and our sense of self. It is an exploration of the closeted versions of ourselves that were repressed and hidden behind closet doors and bedroom doors from childhood into adulthood.
The areas of our identity and expression that we were, or still are, too embarrassed or scared to explore. Versions of ourself that we were told were shameful, that are now lost, unable to re-find. This project is us trying to rediscover all of the potential versions of ourself that we have hidden away from the world. Having killed off so many parts of ourselves, can we ever truly find our authentic self?
Disclaimer: Nudity and loud music
@pinksuitsband @quenchgallery
Image courtesy of Pink Suits
Design by @greta.sharp
(Left) Ted Rogers. Image credit: Tom Dream. (Right) Nicola Singh, 'Chocolatey Faces' (2021). Image credit: SHARP.
‘Moon Monkey Mouse Bear’
Performance by Nicola Singh and Ted Rogers
Thursday 14 April | 7pm
We slip in and out of consciousness.
Singh improvises with the Mohanam raga from Carnatic music, which is associated with the emotions courage and compassion. She interrupts the flow with sung/spoken word improvisation. And a bear dances in her imagination.
‘Moon Monkey Mouse Bear’ is partly inspired by an arrangement of soft toy animals in the window of Singh’s neighbours house. And a recurring fantasy that emerged through the artist's regular singing practice.
The dream scene has been interpreted collaboratively with Ted Rogers (choreography and movement) and Hardeep Pandhal (costumes).
NICOLA SINGH
Nicola Singh (b. 1986, Newcastle upon Tyne) is based in Todmorden, West Yorkshire. She studied experimental music performance and visual performance at Dartington College of Arts Devon, has an MA in Curating Performance from Sunderland University and a practice-led PhD titled 'On The Thesis By Performance’ from Northumbria University.
Singh’s practice spans solo and collaborative performance, film, sound, installation and drawing. She makes autobiographical work, produced in response to contexts of location and place, encounter and dialogue and to feelings and chance.
Forthcoming projects include new commissions from Cinenova FEMINST FILM + VIDEO (London, 2022) and Manasamitra (Dewsbury, 2022). Selected recent projects include ‘the trick is - don’t explain’ experimental writing made around the work of Vahni Capildeo and Simone Forti for Corridor 8 (2022), ‘Eon Om Cycle Song’ a performance for La Bonne Women and Girls Centre, Barcelona (2022) and an artist residency programme with Porthmeor Studios, St Ives (2021).
Singh’s work was acquired by the Government Art Collection in 2021. She is Senior Lecturer in Fine Art and Curation at Manchester School of Art.
TED RODGERS
Ted is a neurodivergent artist and movement director based in Margate. They predominantly use movement in film and live performance. Ted is particularly interested in human behaviour and emotional representations. As a performer they are entertaining, visceral and confronting. As a director they are energetic and encouraging, believing that the best results are born from atmospheric environments, strong communication and ripe ground for the unknown to flourish.
HARDEEP PANDHAL
Hardeep Pandhal (b. Birmingham, UK, 1985) works predominantly with drawing and voice to transform feelings of disinheritance and disaffection into generative spaces that bolster interdependence and self-belief. Applying practices of associative thinking, delivered via rap and elliptical wordplay through the visual language of ‘gutter media’ such as comics and video games, his research-led projects exhibit syncretic strains of post-brown weirdness. Across media, his works are imbued with acerbity and playful complexity, at once confrontational and reflective – Hardeep Pandhal 2022
Image credit: Stephen Daly
Image credit: Stephen Daly
Image credit: Stephen Daly
Image credit: Noski Deville
Over 65s Coffee Mornings
Join us on Friday 8 April from 11:00 to 12:30 for our very first Over 65s Coffee Morning at Quench Gallery.
This will be an informal get-together for the local Margate community over 65 to view Quench’s current exhibitions, ‘once solid now dissolved,’ a solo presentation by Ruth Claxton and the group exhibition ‘In the Land of Cockaigne.’ The Coffee Mornings will allow participants to engage with the gallery's visual arts programme in a relaxed and welcoming environment.
The session is free to attend but we kindly ask that you book a ticket if you are planning to come along. We hope to see you there!
Children’s Understanding Art Club
Join us on Saturday 26 March from 10:30am to 12pm at Quench Gallery for our very first Children’s Understanding Art Club. Open to children aged 3-10.
Understanding Art Club is a supervised workshop for children led by artist Lindsey Mendick at Quench Gallery. The Art Club aims to inspire children to understand and engage with Quench’s visual arts programme in a fun and accessible way.
The children will respond to our current exhibitions, ‘once solid now dissolved,’ a solo presentation by Ruth Claxton and the group exhibition, ‘In the Land of Cockaigne’ which explores themes around food and consumption. The participants will be encouraged to create their own versions of Ruth’s tin foil etchings and their favourite foods in response to the work presented in ‘In the Land of Cockaigne.’
The session is free to attend but we kindly ask that you book a ticket if you wish to come along. We hope to see you there!
New Year’s Eve by Caroline Wong, 2022
Exhibition Walk-Through:
In the Land of Cockaigne
once solid now dissolved
Join us on Saturday 5 March for a special walk-through of our new exhibitions ‘In the Land of Cockaigne’ and ‘once solid now dissolved’ with the artists.
Walk-through times: 11am and 1pm
Children are welcome.
We hope to see you there!
Rosie and Alberto 2021 by Rosie Reed
Sally Hackett Pooch Competition
Inspired by Sally Hackett’s exhibition, Soft Paw on my Fire brain, we asked you wonderful people to send in artworks of you and your beloved pooches! The artist herself will be judging the competition and the winner will be announced on 24/6/2021. Have a look at the gallery of entries below!