You Move Me

Curated by Dr. Azadeh Fatehrad.

Exhibition:
(Private View) 11 January 2018, 5.30-7.30pm
(Public) 12 January - 6 February 2018

Location: Herbert Read Gallery, UCA Canterbury

You Move Me is a meditation on gestural movement, portraiture and what it means to move together as a group. It is a celebration of people living in different geographical locations and how they are connected through movement. The work explores collective and individual identities, our quotidian actions and how we occupy our domestic spaces. It brings hidden identities into the public realm.

You Move Me is an inquiry into the idea of similarities and difference and the concept of synecdoche, which makes visible our idiosyncrasies by bringing similar elements together. Something unique and mesmerising happens when individuals move in unison; our attention is brought to the unique and distinctive nature of each person.

The core artist team is formed of video artist Gemma Riggs, choreographer Laura Murphy and theatre maker and sound artist Melanie Wilson. They have been joined by a number of interdisciplinary collaborators including experimental psychologist Jorina Von Zimmerman who has helped them explore the concept of social synchrony and its implications from a behavioural perspective. You Move Me extends from a wider body of work developed since 2013 by Laura Murphy and Gemma Riggs, whose collaborative research explores the framing of the moving body.

You Move Me has been commissioned by NN Contemporary Art and developed by Gemma Riggs. It has been supported using public funds from Arts Council England.

Artist Biographies:

Gemma Riggs (visual artist)
Gemma is a London-based artist and filmmaker who works across video, photography, installation and sound. Her work explores intensities of experience and the dialogue between the profound and the mundane, the internal and external. She is interested in how we translate emotion and experience through word, vocal utterance body and gesture. She investigates how our invisible, intangible inner worlds manifest themselves in physical, auditory and visible ways. Gemma’s work has been shown internationally in exhibitions and festivals in Latvia, Romania, Ireland, Luxembourg and Lithuania. She has received awards to produce original work from Arts Council England as well as research and travel awards from the British Council.

Laura Murphy (choreographer)
Laura Murphy is a choreographer, performer and teacher. Her work spans large-scale community dance and site-specific professional ensembles, video installations and live staged works. Laura's choreographic work has been shown in New York, Canada, Sweden, Romania, Iceland, China, U.K & Latvia; and at festivals such as the Biennale de Lyon, Reykjavik Dance Festival, Edinburgh Fringe, Dublin Dance Festival & Cork Midsummer Festival. Her most recent work 'Abacus', featuring 9 dancers and 18 buckets, took place outdoors in Dublin's Temple Bar as part of Dublin Fringe Festival 2017.

Melanie Wilson (sound artist, writer and performance maker)
Melanie Wilson is an award winning sound artist, writer and performance maker. Her work employs theatre, sound art, installation and contemporary forms of composition. Recent work includes Kingdom Come (RSC), Opera for the Unknown Woman (Cardiff Millennium Centre, Yorkshire International Festival and Platform Theatre, London); The Narrow World (a film made in Tunisia with Gemma Riggs), Landscape II (Dublin Fringe and U.K tour 2013-14); Autobiographer (Toynbee Studios, London and UK tour - winner of Off Westend Award for Best Sound Design); Iris Brunette (winner of Best Production award at Dublin Fringe); every minute, always (Edinburgh 2010, with Abigail Conway), Self Portrait with Frida (One on One Festival, BAC); The View From Here (One on One Festival, BAC) and Simple Girl (UK and international tour, Edinburgh Festival, Dublin Fringe). Melanie has collaborated with artists and companies including Rotozaza, Clod Ensemble, Coney, Shunt, Chris Goode, Subject to Change, Will Duke and Becky Beasley. She is also a regular collaborator with director Katie Mitchell.

Jorina von Zimmermann (experimental psychologist)
Jorina von Zimmermann has recently completed as PHD at department of Experimental Psychology at University College London. Her research focuses on group cohesion, how it emerges and which consequences it has for intragroup as well as intergroup relations. More specifically, Jorina has been investigating the question if synchronous behaviour, such as temporally aligned movement or speech, creates affiliation and feelings of togetherness between interaction partners in small and large groups. To make use of this novel research tool, over the years, Jorina took part in many public engagement events all across London and she has thus gathered experience in speaking to a non-scientific audience.