STIM CINEMA: THE NEUROCULTURES
COLLECTIVE AND STEVEN EASTWOOD
Co-created by The Neurocultures Collective –Sam Chown Ahern, Georgia Bradburn, Benjamin Brown, Robin Elliott-Knowles, Lucy Walker, artist-filmmaker Steven Eastwood, and Curator Gilly Fox, STIM CINEMA takes the action of stimming as its starting point, connecting delight in repetition to the birth of cinema and to contemporary fascination with GIFS.
Stimming, is the practice of physical repetition as a way of taking sensory pleasure in recurrence, or of expressing and alleviating anxiety, and is a common trait of autistic experience.
Including zoetropes (early moving image / precinematic devices), a 16 minute looped video, and props and ephemera from the production process STIM CINEMA invites the audience to take pleasure in discovering hidden repetitive movements, and the ever-stimming details of the everyday world.
STIM CINEMA encourages us all to remember the joy we share in seeing actions rock and loop, and revealing that such stimulation is not only common to autistic experience but it is in the DNA of the moving image.
ROCK AND SCROLL: THE PARTNERSHIP + STIM CINEMA + COLLECTION SPOTLIGHT
Conor Gavin and Candice Swallow make work that is visually dynamic. It is saturated with colour and imbued with explosive energy. Their works are the result of repeated mark-making gestures using their chosen tools of watercolour crayon, graphite, soft pastel, drawing tablet and stylus pen. The artists will be presenting new drawings in the form of works on paper and digital animation. Joining this will be three screen based works by The Neurocultures Collective and two moving image works from Grundy's collection by Nicola Dale and Rachel Goodyear.
Common to all of these works is the use of repetition; common to the screen-based works is the use of repeated actions as well as looping images that remind us of our contemporary experience of GIFS, memes and infinite scrolling.
Conor Gavin and Candice Swallow are founder members of the pARTnership, a creative and professional development project for artists with a learning disability. The pARTnership is led by the Grundy and delivered in partnership with lead artist Tina Dempsey, The New Langdale (Blackpool Council’s daytime service for people with a learning disability) and with critical friend support from Venture Arts, Manchester.
COLLECTION SPOTLIGHT: TONY HEATON OBE + AMY ELLISON
As part of the Grundy’s ongoing series of activities that draw attention to artists and artworks held in the gallery’s collection, this display pairs two artworks that use light as their medium and which have been made by artists with lived experience of disability.
GARTH GRATRIX: MUMMY'S BOY
As part of Grundy's autumn light focus, Garth Gratrix's 2024 neon work, Mummy's Boy, will remain installed above Grundy's front door until the end of the autumn season.
Mummy's Boy was commissioned by Queer Amusements as part of Garth Gratrix’s recent recent Grundy summer exhibition, Flamboyant Flamingos.