Black History Month commission and call for contributions announced
Posted: 15/07/2022
‘a space’ arts are delighted to announce an exciting new artist commission at our flagship venue God’s House Tower (GHT) to celebrate Black History Month 2022.
Having invited Expressions of Interest earlier in the year from Black artists, the team received a huge response with a wide range of proposals that delved into the fluid and ever-changing history and function of GHT, exploring Southampton’s Old Town heritage and its Black History. Following a tough selection process, we’re pleased to announce interdisciplinary artist Ebun Sodipo will be exhibiting at GHT this October.
Ebun commented: “For this project, I am interested in the changing attitudes towards Africans and their descendants in Southampton between the 16th and 20th century. I plan to explore these attitudes through a fictional love story between a woman living in Southampton and her lover who is always at sea. To write this love story I have been exploring some of the lives of Southampton residents in this time period. This love story will be told across love letters, ‘found’ in the Southampton archives and presented as collage and audio text.”
Open call for contributions
As part of the upcoming exhibition, we’re offering you the opportunity to get involved through a new open call. Ebun is interested in your love letters and is looking for you to share your stories. Whether you keep your old written correspondence, or have a box in your attic full of handwritten notes, cards or letters documenting your parents’ or grandparents’ early romance and travels, all stories are important and we’d love to hear them!
To get involved please contact Ebun by 9am on Monday 1st August at [email protected]
About the artist
Ebun makes work for those who will come after: the black trans people of the future. Her interdisciplinary practice narrates her construction of a black trans-feminine self after slavery and colonialism. Through a process of fragmentation, collage, and fabulation, she devises softer, other- wise ways of imagining and speaking about the body, desire, archives, and the past.
Ebun’s work has been featured at 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning Centre, Bernie Grants Arts Centre, Narrative Projects, Raven Row, The Block Museum of Art, South London Gallery, Arcadia Missa’s How To Sleep Faster, Auto Italia, ICA, Tate Britain, Embassy Gallery, Wasafiri, CCA Annex, Camden Arts Centre, Frieze. She was artist in residence at Porthmeor Studios, and Gasworks. She is currently working on commissions for VISUAL Carlow, FACT Liverpool. She also teaches at Falmouth University.