15th Nov – 30th Nov 2024
Groundwork showcased the outcome of a year-long residency as part of Acme’s Early Career Programme. It presented work by artists Sam Meredith (Adrian Carruthers Award), Anouk Verviers (Goldsmiths MFA Award), Joseph Ijoyemi and Anna Malicka (Helen Scott Lidgett Awards).
Anouk Verviers’ video installation ‘We Gather ar Dawn’ was presented as part of the Acme Award 2024 at Kupfer.
‘Through a feminist science-fiction lens, Verviers invites us into a dystopian world where a group of chronically ill women create, dismantle, and rebuild columns from cob—a traditional blend of clay, sand, and hay, mixed by their own stomping feet. Their labour, marked by cycles of construction and deconstruction, is both a rejection of societal demands for productivity and a ritual of kinship’.
It embodies the constant negotiation of endurance and fragility. Verviers’ pavilions—delicate structures of plywood, survival blankets, and insulation—stand precariously in this space, pointing to the fragility of the body while evoking the defiance inherent in working against its limitations. Here, groundwork represents collective survival, where physical labour challenges bodily limitations and embraces mutual care’.
Extracts of text written by Nastia Svareska
