Finding A ‘Piece’ of Mind at Somerset House
The days keep getting longer and the sun is tempting us to get out and explore. That London summer feeling is peeking its head around the corner, and for the days you want to spend sitting outside, we can’t recommend Somerset House enough – after all, it is where the GIFTED team is based.
For a glimmer of peace amongst the commotion of central London, grab a coffee in the courtyard, or soak up the sun with a view on the River Terrace. Then, while you’re there, check out Somerset House Studios. In the New Wing, in Gallery 31, you’ll find a little exhibition – here’s why you should check it out.
Piece of Mind is a new exhibition getting up close and personal with our intimate domestic spaces. Curated by Harlesden High Street, an art space which celebrates ungentrified neighbourhoods of London and provides resources for underrepresented artists, the exhibition explores the effects of the changing functions of our homes, where we’re carrying out more and more of our work, social, and leisure activities.
With a range of multimedia works from Ocean Baulcombe-Toppin, 雅 YA + Casandra Burrell, Farrah Riley Gray, Tyreis Holder, KO___OL and Anna Sebastian, Piece of Mind focuses on the private space of the bedroom – a place where so many of us spend so much of our time.
One work dominates the room, spreading out from the corner and reconfiguring the layout of the gallery. For Ti is the work of artist, poet, and visual storyteller Tyreis Holder, who works heavily with installation, textiles, performance, poetry, sculpture, and sound. Her textile carpet piece here explores the assault on our domestic and sacred spaces as we increasingly carry out more work than play. Particularly throughout the lockdowns, you may have felt as though you were climbing the walls, and this is the feeling that this work evokes – both contained and fluid, sprawling and solid.
In our current late capitalist environment, it has become a challenge to truly rest. For many of us, our bedrooms have become the landscape of our side hustles, because it feels imperative to monetise our hobbies and interests. Or, we simply move from the bed to the desk and back to the bed every day, our spaces of work and rest just metres apart. Our mobile phones mean we are always accessible, or expected to be – and these rooms which were once places of peace and privacy are now easily interrupted. The outside influences of long working hours, temporary contracts, work group chats, and virtual social currency warp the boundaries between work and rest. With all this at play, how can we find peace of mind?
Piece of Mind explores the challenge of privacy and rest, and its psychological effect, “as our minds are increasingly required to compartmentalise our lives in a way our spaces no longer can”.
Piece of Mind is a part of Somerset House Studios in G31, New Wing. Open Mon – Sun 10.00 – 18.00 until 17 July. Free to attend.
