In Contiguity
Ocean Baulcombe-Toppin
Jermaine Francis
Juliette Lena Hager
Pía Ortuño
Jake Walker
13 July - 14 September 2024
In Contiguity brings together works by five London-based artists whose varied practices converge on notions of motion, contact, tension and sound. Across video, sculpture, painting, installation and photography, Baulcombe-Toppin, Francis, Lena Hager, Ortuño and Walker each attune their works to the contradistinctions of this subject, together forming a choreography that speaks to the ways in which our bodies traverse in time, touching, parting and passing one another.
Baulcombe-Toppin predominantly employs found objects to construct a contemporary philosophy through her spirituality, British-Bajan heritage, and rituals for collective healing. She draws on tropes of domesticity – such as crystal glasses, dark wood furniture and photographs shot on 35 mm – to evoke a sentiment of intimacy in her ceremonial assemblages. Taken out of their usual order, preserved, reconstituted, and often anointed with charged water, these items enact a mysticism that ruminates on moments of togetherness shared between generations, family and friends – from the UK to the Caribbean.
Suspended from the ceiling of the gallery hangs a horizontal bar of adjoined cut-glass mugs, most commonly drawn from the cupboard during celebrations and get-togethers where punch or tea is served. They become vestibules connecting bodies in the ritual of celebration and social interaction, their transparent materiality further offering a portal-like liquidity, conjuring the magic of incantation and communion. The composition is reminiscent of a makeshift swing, connecting us to notions of nostalgia, play, solace and hope; two Caribbean-sun-charged, clear-quartz crystals are concealed within the structure, placed there to enact balance, protection, and energy regulation.
Francis’s photographic and film works similarly deploy visuals associated with the everyday, most often blending archival materials that explore the issues arising from interactions between bodies in shared space.
Lost In Music: A Post Industrial Dreamscape (2021-present), an edited version of an ever-evolving video piece that explores race and politics in a dancefloor context, overlays a photographic flag of a stilled image from within it. Placed up high, broadcast out into the gallery space, and visible through the window, it alludes to the collapse of public and private space in late capitalism. The work itself, like its display, is purposefully collaged in a cacophonic style that mimics the wasteland of information we’re often presented with; fast streams of internet visuals that we can’t fully grasp. It explores, through aesthetics, notions of hyper-productivity, dance music, Post-Industrial England, race and its intersections with class.
