Aphelion Slip

Artists Kim Coleman and Cara Tolmie, and dancer and choreographer Zoë Poluch collaborate for the first time in this new commission exploring the use of light, voice and movement within a theatrical setting. Aphelion Slip is built from a pocket full of triadic mediations on shared experiences of cumulative writing, video conversations, audible co-body treatments, reading dances, personality development of light fixtures, shadow play, sunbathing, asynchronous premonitions, and orbital hollers. Grounded upon curious experiments and repetitive analysis, Aphelion Slip uses various scales of astral call and response to deploy the concrete qualities of the three collaborators’ respective lexicons of light, sound, and movement. Through scoring formulated to disorient dramaturgy, cadence and sequence, the audience is invited to witness this shared practice, unfolding through an enactment of visibilities, audibilities and compatibilities of flesh and electric bodies. This Block Universe commission has been made possible thanks to the support of the Arts Council England and the Embassy of Sweden, Londo

Nos Algae's: Generation: 25 Years of Contemporary Art in Scotland

For this live performance the artists built their own private club-come-bedroom-stage in Tramway 4. This invented space was constituted of, and created from the friends’ correspondence. Personal reflections on performance, feminism and music were exchanged alongside a mix of real and fictional material to create scripted scenarios. The performance took place within the context of a video installation that featured live action footage and a soundtrack representing the interpersonal networks between the artists. Reflections on the social collide with fragmented theatrical scenes based on the artists ‘genuine’ relationships that ultimately complicate the depiction of intimacy

'Nos Algaes', HD Video, 26", 2015. Screening, Cinenova: Now Showing, London, 2015.

For this screening event, organised by Cinenova at LUX Artists Moving Image London, the artists Kimberley O'Neill, Cara Tolmie & France-lise McGurn screened their collaboratively made video 'Nos Algaes' (2015), alongside contextual works by Ruth Novaczek (1996) and Judith Barry (1982), selected by Tolmie, McGurn & O’Neill. Cinenova is a non-profit organisation dedicated to distributing films and videos made by women, their archive resides in the Showroom gallery, London. 'Cinenova: Now Showing' is a monthly screening programme where the organisation invite an artist or collective to screen their work alongside works from the Cinenova archive. The screening series intends to materialise relationships between contemporary artist moving image practice and the feminist and organising legacies present in the Cinenova collection. 'Nos Algaes’, 2015, is a collaborative video merging documentation of a live performance (of the same name which took place at Tramway, Glasgow 2014) with fictional scenes and pre-recoded material (soundtrack and video). ‘Nos Algaes’ takes place in an invented space; the artists’ own private club-come-bedroom-stage. The content is derived from the three friends’ correspondence, where personal reflections on performance, feminism and music are exchanged alongside fictional scripts. This depiction of intimacy is complicated by the fragmentary structure of the video and its disjunctive soundtrack, as personal reflections collide with fictional scenes that juxtapose 'acted' and 'naturalistic' modes of performance

'Nos Algaes', collaborative HD Video, 26", 2015. Screening, 'Space Time: The Multiverse' Festival, Wysing Arts Centre, 2015.

'Nos Algaes’, 2015, is a collaborative video merging documentation of a live performance (of the same name which took place at Tramway, Glasgow 2014) with fictional scenes and pre-recoded material (soundtrack and video). ‘Nos Algaes’ takes place in an invented space; the artists’ own private club-come-bedroom-stage. The content is derived from the three friends’ correspondence, where personal reflections on performance, feminism and music are exchanged alongside fictional scripts. This depiction of intimacy is complicated by the fragmentary structure of the video and its disjunctive soundtrack, as personal reflections collide with fictional scenes that juxtapose 'acted' and 'naturalistic' modes of performance. Screened as part of ‘Space Time: The Multi-Verse’, Wysing Arts Centre’s annual Arts Festival, September 2015. The festival was loosely curated around themes of altered states and multiple identities. 'Nos Algaes' was selected to be screened as part of a series of events programmed by Electra, a London based contemporary arts organisation and curator, who produces and supports works/exhibitions made across moving image, sound and visual arts. Electra's program was a continued investigation into the feminist performance score, connecting this investigation to the writing of theoretical particle physicist and queer feminist philosopher Karen Barad's concepts of intra-action. As part of a week long residency at Wysing Arts Centre (invited by Electra), artists O'Neill and Tolmie created a performance script which was distributed at the screening of 'Nos Algaes'

Amygdala N.O.S

The live performance and installation was staged at the South London Gallery as part of the closing event of We (not I) (a series of events across art spaces in London organised by artist Melissa Gordon and writer Marina Vishmidt, revolving around topics of “accumulation in collaborative art practice, the development of a “we” (non-singular) voice in art authorship, the gendered nature of art historic genius and female value.”) In this performance the artists worked collaboratively to construct and present their interpersonal position, exposing the audience to a tangled web of networks that linked the artists and their practices (including neurological, technological, physical and emotional networks). Expanding upon their long-term friendship they generated a collective vernacular, siphoning moments of shared intimacy and cultural references through communication technologies. The performance centred on a projected video work screened in the centre of the gallery, featuring a scripted dialogue between the 3 artists that occurs over a telephone conversation. The gender biasing of telephone networks was a motif explored throughout the performance. This video was accompanied by other video works displayed on flat screen monitors, sculptural props and a pre-recorded soundtrack of conversation and abstract sound integrated within a live DJ set. The simultaneous audio-visual elements were used to create a sense of displaced subjectivity for the audience, while the artists moved independently within the space conducting shared activities, such selecting music or reconfiguring the costume and props. The secondary videos featured footage shot in a felled forest in Scotland and constructed sets in the artists’ studios. These mediated depictions of the artists spread across locations, accompanying their physical presence in the performance space, expressed the networked nature of their group identity and placed the artists in their own liminal place between fiction and reality. Whilst producing the videos the artists rotated roles of filming, performing and editing, in an attempt to undermine the traditional hierarchical structures associated with industrial filmmaking

Collected Gnommero

Collected Gnommero is a series of five thematic pamphlets independently published in Glasgow between 2008 – 2015. The pamphlets provided space for artists and writers to respond to Italo Calvino’s thoughts on the literary qualities of lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, multiplicity and consistency (as published in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, 1988). Gnommero was also an economic experiment in independent publishing: the pamphlets were produced collectively by the contributors who shared production costs. The copies were then divided equally and distributed at launch events featuring performances and presentations by the contributors. The five Gnommero pamphlets, one for each memo (excluding ‘Consistency’), have been gathered into a red envelope of Collected Gnommero containing works by 54 contributors over Gnommero’s six-year lifespan. Gnommero was edited by Sarah Tripp with the artists Richard Taylor and Eona McCallum. Works in the Gnommero Collection are by: Giles Bailey, Ruth Barker, Becky Beasley, Anca Benera, Tom Betteridge, Nathalie de Briey, Kimberley Bright, Jenny Brownrigg, Maria Bojanowska, Barry Burns, Neil Davidson, Rachael Disbury, Rowena Easton, Laura Edbrook, Kathryn Elkin, Stuart Fallon, Kate Grenyer, Lauren Hall, Jane Hartshorn, Jamie Hogarth, Simone Hutchinson, Ben Knight, Mhari Lafferty, Chin Li, Lila Matsumoto, Eona McCallum, Conal McStravick, Giuseppe Mistretta, Charlotte Morgan, Kate Morrell, Aniara Omann, Steven Paige, Jessica Potter, Darren Rhymes, Anthony Schrag, Laura Simpson, Carrie Skinner, Louise Shelley, Katherine Sowerby, Emily Speed, Patrick Staff, Catherine Street, Richard Taylor, Iris Tendink, Cara Tolmie, Sarah Tripp, Tom Varley, Chris Walker, Thom Walker, Daniella Watson, Lauren Wells, Rebecca Wilcox, George Ziffo