Mouldings | Workshop
Blackhorse Activators
19.10.2023
Thursday 19th October, 5.30–7.30pm
Blackhorse Activators responded to Ukrainian-born artist Ksenia Pedan's solo exhibition Reversion, through the lens of her short fiction text Letter 50, which imagines the disgruntled complaints of a freewheeling freelance interior designer's landlord:
"I must say that I am deeply troubled by the way in which you have expressed your personal issues through the decor".
The workshop began with a tour of the exhibition with curator Adomas Narkevičius, opening a discussion on the artist's use of materials and processes – including the artist's own hand-made pigments and incorporating IKEA ready-made furniture as a starting point for sculpture.
After reading and discussing Letter 50 as a framework for thinking through Pedan's exhibition, the group used electrical cable, staples and paint to produce a collaborative wall drawing that responded to the materials and ideas at play in Mouldings, Pedan's series of artistic interventions that ambivalently embellished the gallery walls.
Curator Jessie Krish
Blackhorse Activators are a group of 15-25 year olds from Walthamstow with a passion for applying creativity to build community, who meet monthly at Blackhorse Road Workshop and cultural venues in London. They are a graduate cohort from the Blackhorse Responders programme.
Ksenia Pedan (b. 1986, Ukraine) is an artist currently based in London and Stockholm, primarily working in sculpture and installation. She graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London, and has exhibited extensively as part of an artist duo with Ben Burgis. Pedan’s installations constitute spatial contexts, with sculptural elements contributing to hybrid spaces of domesticity and publicity that often facilitate performative actions. These installations often function as stage sets for contextualised live performances, challenging the glossy perception of art spaces through their reference to the entropy and decay of environments, objects, and feelings. Selected solo/duo exhibitions include Forde, Geneva, 2019; Baltic Triennial 13, kim? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga, 2018; Dortmund Kustverein, 2017; Union Pacific, London, 2015. Among recent group exhibitions are CAC Brétigny, Brétigny-sur-Orge, 2022; Varberg Konsthall, Varberg, 2021; Drei, Cologne, 2018; Wschód Gallery, Warsaw; Raven Row, London, 2017.
