Uncanny Waters: Weathering is an exhibition of queer myth, strange ecologies and collective imagination. The show explores how bodies and environments become entangled, shape one another and change over time through a mix of visual, sculptural and live work.

Growing out of Heads Bodies Legs’ queer ecology project Uncanny Waters, a costume and performance project inspired by the waters of the Thames and its tributaries, the exhibition brings together the resulting work. It considers water as a force of connection, crossing borders, carrying histories and new ecologies, and bringing different worlds together.

The exhibition uses folklore to explore queer experience through shapeshifting, haunting, and ritual. Artists draw on personal archives, found objects and salvaged materials, including scrap metal, glass and fast-fashion clothing recovered from the creek. Together the work forms an archive of consumption, pollution, memory and histories held in place. 

Weathering, suggests endurance. At a time shaped by climate breakdown, water pollution, attacks on trans rights, disability injustice and continuing struggles for human rights around the world. Weathering is about what we live through and what those experiences leave behind. To weather something is to be changed by it and to carry that memory and experience into whatever comes next. Like the collective itself, the work is entangled and evolving, shaped by new materials, stories and forms. 

Visitors will encounter sculptural environments, artists’ films, costumes, photography and live performance. Featured artists include Arkem Mark Walton, bug!, E.M. Parry, Fanny Bleach, George Cox, Honor Bathurst, K.A. Harper, Kate Coss, Lu Firth, Medusa Has Been and Ray Malone.

Alongside the exhibition, Uncanny Assemblies bring together artists, practitioners and invited guests through a public programme of conversations, workshops and collective encounters.

Partners supporting the wider development of the project include: Wimbledon School of Art, Somerset House Studios, National Maritime Museum, Thames21 and Creekside Discovery Centre. 

Events: 

• Thursday 19 November     Private View
  Opening celebration for Uncanny Waters: Weathering.

• Friday 20 November, 2–4pm    Uncanny Collage
  Ray Malone and Fiona Slater lead a playful collage workshop exploring queer folklore, strange landscapes and transformation. All ages | £10

• Saturday 21 November, 2–4pm   Queer Tamas
  Anthony Psaila / Medusa Has Been explores votives, desire, hope and fear through the creation of personalised queer tamas. 18+ | £10

• Sunday 22 November    4–7pm   Reclaiming Waters: Uncanny Assembly
  Artists, scientists and activists come together to explore pollution, privatisation, queer ecology and the changing Thames through discussion and film. Free

• Thursday 26 November  4pm Curators Tour with Ray Malone

• Saturday 28 November, 12–1pm    Uncanny Netting
  Lu Firth leads a natural-fibre net-making workshop using flax, hemp and nettle, exploring connection, restraint and collective care. All ages | Free

• Saturday 28 November, 2–3pm    Shared Material Ecologies
  A conversation with artists about shared authorship, exchanged materials, collaborative making and interconnected practices. All ages | Free

• Saturday 28 November, 4–6pm     What Creature Are You Becoming?
  Award-winning drag thing Fanny Bleach leads a joyful, absurd exploration of our continually transforming bodies. 18+ | £10

• Saturday 28 November, 7–10pm    Creatures of the Creek
  A closing night of queer folklore, stories, performance, music and cabaret featuring the Deptford Necker, Arkem Mark Walton, Fanny Bleach and Medusa Has Been. £15/£20, including a drink and refreshments

Check out full list of events here. 

Access: Weathering includes step-free access, captions, creative audio description, a quiet space and curator-led tours.

Heads Bodies Legs has collaborated with DesCript to create an extensive programme of creative audio description, exploring how artworks can be encountered through language, imagination and different sensory perspectives.  DesCript is led by partially blind poet and facilitator Joseph Rizzo Naudi, and the descriptions are written and performed by Annie Hayter, whose work explores queer transformations and alternative forms of storytelling. 

Audio description and related digital material can also be accessed through the Uncanny Gallery on the Heads Bodies Legs website.

Heads Bodies Legs CIC is a queer feminist arts organisation creating participatory projects through visual art, performance and community collaboration.

Website: www.headsbodieslegs.org
Instagram: @headsbodieslegs

Press contact: Ray Malone, headsbodieslegs@gmail.com

High-resolution press images and further information are available on request.