Exhibition | Fear & Yearning (and the sliver in between)

Description

An exhibition by Jane Glennie

The paradox of experiencing the desire to exist in the present, while also enjoying the complexities of consciousness, is a tricky one. (Mike Nelson)

Feeling the vibrations between here and there and then and now (Chris Krauss)

No true yearning is about the future. Or if it is about the future, it is about some aspect of the past imagined and transposed into the future. Some aspect of the past that we know can never be again. (Toby Martinez de las Rivas)

Through digital videos and related images, both intensely present and intensely absent, this exhibition expresses emotions that wobble between intense fears and yearning for something other.

The ‘slivers’ are the more comfortable moments between feeling fear and wanting something other for oneself or for humanity. The struggle to exist in the moment when, somewhere, the grass is always seeming greener. The fear of not having credibility, or autonomy, or a voice that is recognised. The fear of never amounting to much, to submitting to the subjugation of women, or not fighting one’s corner. The terror and desire of motherhood, resisting ambivalence. Yearning and fighting for progress. A desire to widen the slivers.

This exhibition connects the dots between two recent film projects by Jane Glennie: Because Goddess is Never Enough created with Rosie Garland, and a series of films made with Toby Martinez de las Rivas (developed from poetry published in his recent book Floodmeadow) and sound artist Neda Milenova Mirova. The films are playing in a loop on the screen on the ground floor, while the plinths and walls on all levels of the Alison Richard Building include film stills, images, and materials leading towards, or derived from, these film works.

• Read an exhibition Q&A with Jane Glennie
• Join us on 14 September at 17:30 for Herstories: problems and solutions, a 30-minute programme of short-films, followed by a panel discussion & reception

Biographies

Jane Glennie’s films have been screened at festivals worldwide. They have won awards and distinctions, including Best Video Art at the International Festival Dona i Cinema (Spain), an Audience Choice Award at Women Over 50 Film Festival (UK), Oxford Brookes Poetry Film Competition (UK), and Weimar Poetry Film Competition (Germany). They have been featured by Faber & Faber, www.shondaland.com and at the Southbank Centre. Because Goddess is Never Enough was awarded funding from Arts Council England. In 2023 she has presented her work at MIX: Digital Storytelling at the British Library, at the Royal Anthropological Film Conference, and at Radical Repetition: London Conference in Critical Thought.

Rosie Garland is a writer of poetry, short and long fiction, and essays. Her latest poetry collection ‘What Girls Do in the Dark’ was selected as a Poetry Society Best Book of 2021, Northern Soul’s Best Reads of 2021, and has been shortlisted for the Polari Prize 2021. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Toby Martinez da las Rivas is the author of Terror (Faber, 2014), Black Sun (Faber, 2018) and Floodmeadow (Faber, 2023). Black Sun was shortlisted for the Forward Prize (2018). He has won The Weiner Library International Book Art Prize and an Eric Gregory Award.

Neda Milenova Mirova is a sound artist and concert cellist from Bulgaria.