Harold Offeh: Reading the Realness at Tintype Gallery London, 2017
Harold Offeh: Reading the Realness at Tintype Gallery London, 2017
Harold Offeh: Graceful (Arabesque 2), 2008
BHP façade
BHP Laundry Room
On 9th of May starting at 4pm you are welcome to join us for PUBLICS Event & Performance by London based artists Harold Offeh and Eduardo Padilha. The event will start with a Choreograph Me performance. It’s an ongoing project in which Offeh invites audiences to use his body as a material for the production of a series of performative gestures. With Offeh performing live for one hour, visitors will generate instructions for actions, movements and gestures. Audience is invited to participate and join Offeh in the fulfilment of the instructions, or to direct and edit from afar. Choreograph Me, originally commissioned by Mima, Middleborough, uses the framework of instructions to form a collectively choreographed piece. By offering his body as a material to be experimented with, Offeh explores the question of how an artist can be used as a sculptural material and his labour made useful to an audience.
The evening continues with a dialogical Talk, where Eduardo Padilha and Harold Offeh present their artistic practice and collaboration under BalinHouseProjects – an artist-run, non-profit space run by Padilha at his flat. It provides space for exhibitions, dialogue and platform for connection with other artist-run spaces and organisations. It also creates an opportunity for residents to experience contemporary art of a professional and international standard, locally and in a familiar environment.
After the talk Offeh presents Covers live; a development of Covers project, an ongoing series of unique performances transforming 70’s and 80’s music album covers into durational events. The series has developed through photographs, video and live performance.
On Tuesday 8th and Friday 11th Padilha will host small groups by appointment at PUBLICS where he will share information of BHP and his studio practice in discussion with guest. The event is aimed for artists, curators, other cultural workers and art organisations. 5 people can join in each 2-hour session. The format goes along with the nature of meetings at BHP and its hospitality to give more close attention to individuals. In case you would hope to participate in these meetings please contact: eliisa.suvanto@publics.fi for registration.
Tuesday evening Harold Offeh will present Reading the Real in Museum of Impossible Forms located in Kontula (Keinulaudankuja 4 E at Kontula shopping mall, 2nd floor). Offeh invites a group of people to read a transcript of discussion between Rachel Dolezal, the transracial academic and activist and a group of panellist on a US talk show called The Real. Dolezal who was outed by the media in 2016 after living as a Black woman. The original TV discussion features Rachel talking to an all-female panel made up of women of colour who confront her with their lived experiences of racial difference. Doors open at 6.30PM, program starts 7:00PM.
Eduardo Padilha resembles found materials to reflect the urban experience where private and public domain intersect. The appropriation, deployment and dislocation of objects are the points of departure for new modes of signification. Since 2006, Padilha has run BalinHouseProjects, a non-profit artist-run space in London SE1.
Harold Offeh is an artist working in a range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice in a career spanning 20 years. Offeh, often employs humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical narratives and contemporary culture and is interested in the space created by the inhabiting or embodying of history. He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally.