The Joystick and The Reigns
Eve Stainton
Friday 11th September - Sunday 1st November 2026
The Joystick and The Reins by artist and choreographer Eve Stainton, produced in collaboration with Quench Gallery, marks a pivotal development in the artist’s practice through a transition from performance-integrated work to the production of autonomous sculptural artworks.
Eve Stainton is a highly respected performance artist and choreographer who has performed and toured extensively nationally and internationally. Often working with welded steel and live welding, sculptural objects in their practice previously functioned as props or scenographic extensions of choreography. Rooted in community research, their work examines how marginalised individuals encounter systems of authority, exploring codes of gender, class, threat and vulnerability through theatrical and embodied forms. This project enables a significant step change by translating these concerns into sculpture as the principal medium, allowing material form, scale and spatial presence to carry meaning independently.
The exhibition will present a new body of sculptural work centred on large-scale metal figures installed throughout the gallery as a cohesive environment. Bendable metal wire forms arranged in staged tableaux will evoke suspended moments of confrontation or collective tension. Objects and garments will be permanently fused into the metal structures, forming hybrid bodies that appear simultaneously imposing and tender. Sculptural shields and placards propped against sandbags will punctuate the installation, referencing protection, containment and states of anticipation and threat. Together, these elements construct a spatially immersive sculptural installation grounded in material presence rather than performance activation.
The works investigate who is permitted to define “threat” within society and how marginalised groups become instrumentalised through systems of surveillance and social control. Drawing on historical reenactments, police and riot arrest imagery, and 1980s crime reconstruction broadcasts, the project examines how scenes of authority and suspicion are theatrically constructed and culturally reproduced.
Dramatic lighting, scenographic backdrops and a soundscape referencing Ennio Morricone’s score for The Thing (1982) will shape the exhibition environment, intensifying psychological atmosphere. Accompanying digital collages incorporating archival material will provide contextual framing and clarity.
THIS EXHIBITION IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE HENRY MOORE FOUNDATION