FK Alexander (Photo: IRO)
When: 6th – 9th June 2018
Where: The Place, 17 Duke’s Rd, London WC1H 9PY
£: Ticket prices vary, depending on the event
What is it?
Splayed Festival takes place at The Place in London from Wednesday 6th to Saturday 9th June; drawing together a cluster of subversive artists to challenge what we think we know about gender, desire, identity, violence, performance and power.
One of the festival highlights will be the London premiere of Violence by Glasgow-based performance artist FK Alexander, whose (I Could Go on Singing) Over the Rainbow became a cult hit at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2016.
Alexander is living in recovery from drug addiction and mental collapse, and her work is concerned with issues of wounds, recovery, aggressive healing, radical wellness, industrialisation and noise music. Her new work, which closes the festival on Saturday, uses text and percussion in a meditative investigation of the cruelty of love, the weight of loneliness and the freedom of anxiety.
Opening the festival will be a double bill from Northern Irish performer Sheena McGrandles and Norwegian artist Hilde I. Sandvold. Figured from Sheena McGrandles, presents two female bodies editing and re-editing themselves across a wall, creating and recreating images of butch female sensuality and possibilities of lesbian cruising. Figured is followed by Hilde I. Sandvold’s humourous reflection on sex and sexuality, Dans for Satan (Dance, dammit). The solo show aims to discuss a society where we can grow up being told that men and women can do the same thing; that is, exactly whatever they want.
Also in the festival, Slug Horizons from Florence Peake and Eve Stainton, promotes an emotional landscape of bravery as it enquires into issues of marginalised affection, sexuality and the expressive potential of women’s bodies through intimacy. Florence Peake is a London-based artist who works in both dance and visual arts, with artwork being displayed in galleries such as the National Portrait Gallery and the Hayward Gallery.
Finally, in a free performance at the Wellcome Collection, Charlie Ashwell is a dance witch exploring gender and power in Banishing Dance.
More info: www.theplace.org.uk