LAST MINUTE.
“The downside of sought-after experience
is that they usually end” – Mark Grief
Welcome to “Last Minute,” a group exhibition that happened in the best of ways, just in the nick of time. There is a silliness, nervousness, and excitement in things happening unplanned. Either where small degrees of separation join together, or the unpredictable breaks you open. Conclusions are curated and life reminds us that open endings and beginnings are found in spontaneity and happenstance.
The emerging artists displayed in the gallery were gathered by the willingness to participate in something “last minute,” and this show challenges you to see yourself in their work and the things that brought them together.
Join us for a workshop on Sunday 4 February from 2-4pm.
30 January - 4 February 2024
Presented by Projection Room
75 Dean Street, W1D 3PU
Curated and Produced by
Olivia Crosby & Phoebe Kaniewska
Zissel Aronow
Owen Bennett
Olivia Crosby
Josselin Demelier
Aldo De Silvestri
Freya Gascoyne
Phoebe Kaniewska
Marla-Sunshine Kellard-Jones
Elissa Lenoir Ajaka
Faye Macaree
Taylor Proverbs
Chloe Watts
GALLERY GUIDE
01. Zissel Aronow
Our grief is not your weapon / One hundred and eleven transliterations of the Mourner’s Kaddish
Silver letterpress ink, black sugar paper, tracing paper, nails
The Mourner’s Kaddish is meant to be recited alongside a minyan – a gathering of ten Jews. It is not to be recited in private, but in public, so the congregation can respond in turn. The Kaddish is an obligation.
As of the twenty-fifth of January, Tu Bishvat, twenty-five thousand, nine hundred Palestinians have been killed. And much more than that has died alongside them.
How do we mourn during a genocide?
02. Elissa Lenoir Ajaka
Only the Birds Remain
MDF Wood Board
Only the Birds Remain is a recollection of the artist’s childhood memories of the summer of 2006. That summer, while stuck in a war zone, the artist was told stories about what was happening. In those stories the bombs became birds and the fields in which she played were invaded by bugs. Over the years, those stories took over and are the only thing left; from the summer of 2006 only the stories of birds, bugs and other creatures remain.
03. Taylor Proverbs
with Bows
Black Clay, Clear Glaze, Ceramic
Two functional ceramic slabes 01. 3 extruded bows 02. 2 extruded bows
04. Marla-Sunshine Kellard-Jones
Two for Joy
Printed Paper Collage on Lining Paper
Each print is informed by the grey area that divides truth, secrecy, honesty, lies and the ways these can relay and retell intentionality within issues of the personal, familial, memory, recollection, and reminiscence of remembrance .
Latin plaques (no.2 & no.8) inspired by those used in gardens and arboretums to identify plant species, have been redesigned to narrate the environments in which they are shown. Each plaque suggests what is seen. Both are universally multi-purposeful – created to mimic the authority one perceives through language.
05. Faye Macaree
Caught in the space of forgetting
Phototransfers
I saw it pulse, shift and fade. Held briefly and lost again to time.
06. Chloe Watts
Becoming/Belonging
Mild Steel
An abstract take on feeling lost
07. Owen Bennett
Jack on Heath, Bambie on Grove
Semi gloss photograph paper
These two images reflect a larger project focusing on the tension between human stimulation and nature.
08. Josselin Demelier
Hello world, man overboard
Collaged watercolor on paper
Illustrated depictions of recent memories and dreams in no particular order
09. Phoebe Kaniewska
None shall be barren in your land!
Cotton, wadding, thread
After her partner was diagnosed with testicular cancer, Kaniewska learned how to sew, quilt and embroider. While her partner slept, rested and underwent treatment, Kaniewska made this work, which encapsulates the domesticity, grief and love of that period of time.
10. Olivia Crosby
Fuzzy Memory
Needle felted wool
Chair in my late father’s office, a place full of fond memories I’m afraid of forgetting.
11. Aldo De Silvestri
Lucie & Emilie
Oil painting on canvas, on paper
12. Freya Gascoyne
Can I ever not mourn something?
Emulsion, oil slick, acrylic, oil pastel and ink on canvas
Sensitive creature nestles in womb-like circles, transforming and emerging from crushing backgrounds and shining in light
Zissel Aronow is a queer Jewish community organizer from Philadelphia, currently based in London. They curate spaces centered around care and resistance such as Baby Tooth, a shop by and for local artists, which hosted community workshops and events as well as closely collaborated with Homies Helping Homies to raise money for their mutual aid work. Their current practice looks at ritual and archives as a form of ancestral and cultural connection and seeks to collectively reimagine a radical Judaism beyond Zionism. They are experimenting with slow processes, including field recording, letterpress and darkroom printing, as a way of finding and being with their body after years of disembodiment. Transformative justice, harm reduction, abolition, and a deep love for their grandparents thread through all that they do.
Elissa Lenoir Ajaka is a London based multidisciplinary artist and designer, currently studying a Visual Communication Masters at the Royal College of Art. Through the use of illustration, generative AIs, photography and animation, storytelling and fiction are central theme to the artist’s practice. Her work focuses on reactivating existing stories, archival documentation and artifacts in new contexts, giving them new meanings and new perspectives on history and contemporary questions.
An existence between Fine Art and Function. Taylor Proverbs is an artist based in London. Creating work across several mediums including clay, print making and written word, for the past 5 years. Her work explores the confessional and nuanced layers of fragility and thought. She invites viewers into a reflective journey, where she values the subjects of light, space, process and time.
Marla-Sunshine Kellard-Jones is a London based artist, whose work aims to open discussions around the often unspoken and inescapable aspects of life, such as death, the self, familial relations, cultural values, traditions, universal archetypes, symbols, and commonly enacted principles.
Using the medium of sculpture, especially the found or inherited object, collage and text-based prints, Sunshine places her work in a somewhat juxtaposing ‘commonly personal’ realm, inviting the viewer not to be led by a particular narrative or to experience the work through a definite lens, instead providing a space for personal engagement.
Faye Macaree is a multi disciplinary practitioner. Exploring themes of memory, recollection and nostalgia, her work moslty takes form in process led printmaking.
Chloe Watts is a visual communicator currently at the Royal College of Art. Her work draws upon her personal experiences, and she combine this with external input to create authentic and poignant social commentaries. Creating allows Chloe the space to explore, understand and communicate her innermost thoughts.
Owen Bennett is an image-based artist born in Manchester. Graduating from BA Photography at LCC in 2021, Owen has been primarily working and living in London.
Focusing on themes of care, ecology and ideological representation, Owen’s work explores tensions between the natural environment and the insatiable human desire for stimulation. Inspired by post-humanism and artists such as Joel-Peter Witkin, Owen’s fascination with portrait imagery seeks to challenge the humanist connotations of a traditional subject.
Employing obfuscation and concealment, the exhibited images are part of an ongoing project exploring representation of the transcendent.
Owen realises his characters through collaboration with models and performance elements.
Josselin Demelier is a interdisciplinary artist and designer based in East London. His work explores narrative fictions inspired from liminal spaces, found media, and childhood memories. Josselin takes use of a vast personal collection of books and magazines to create his compositions, nurturing his dyslexia though rapid dissection and reassembly to form new narratives.
Phoebe Kaniewska is a London-based multidisciplinary artist and facilitator. She facilitates workshops and art practises in a variety of settings, including galleries, settings and hospitals and is currently a resident artist at St George’s Hopsital, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and the Foundling Museum. She is interested in creating and caring for spaces that support, excite and interact with communities and individuals alike, using art in its most cathartic and therapeutic forms.
She often draws on her previous experience of healthcare, both working in caring settings as a midwife and support worker for those with SEND, and as a patient herself, to create spaces that are accessible and inclusive. She is interested in process-led work, and often works with tactile, malleable materials like metal, wax and textiles. Her work is driven by British and Polish folklore, storytelling and participation.
Olivia Crosby is a designer/maker from New York with a background in sculpture and graphic design, currently studying at the Royal College of Art. After 3 years designing exhibits and museums, her work is focused on creating caring spaces for meaningful conversation.
When creating spaces, systems, objects, and furniture she is curious about how our physical world holds our stories, memories, and emotions. She is infatuated with chairs, the people who sit on them, and the way we care for the people we share our lives with.
Aldo De Silvestri is a young French figurative painter, often drawn to making portraits in oil of those around him. He uses family and friends as his sitters, as he knows their faces best - his paintings convey an understanding and knowledge of his subjects. De Silvestri uses painting as a way to give permanence to fleeting feelings, emotions and expressions on his sitter’s faces. By inscribing it in a more permanent medium, De Silvestri aims to give his paintings an ambiguous and slow, but dramatic impact.
Freya Gascoyne’s work explores her experiences of gender and queerness through the interrogation, abstraction and muddying of the body. Inherently interdisciplinary, her practice moves across and between painting, collecting, arranging, performing, rolling, hanging, stretching, experimenting and researching.
Freya is completing her third year of undergraduate studies at the London Interdisciplinary School where she is exploring blending their art practice with creative research.