Life Boat
28 March - 7 April 2024
Thurs to Sun, 12-5pm
Private View :
Thursday 28 March, 6-8pm
Taking the lifeboat as a metaphor for precarity, eight artists respond to our uncertain times, ecological and social change and shifting landscapes, from both local and global perspectives.
Events
Scroll down for further information about the Low Tide Walk and workshops taking place throughout the exhibition.
Life Boat brings together artists with a shared interest in exploring precarity as a site of dynamic transition. Each takes an investigative approach to the environmental, social and historical themes evoked by the lifeboat, as a means of addressing ecological crisis, liminal landscapes, close and distant horizons, boundaries and displacement, lines of rescue, navigation and transformation.
The gallery location in Deptford, once a major departure point for maritime trade and scientific expeditions from Deptford Dockyard, resonates with the exhibition’s concept of being ‘at sea’, in the sense of negotiating the unknown. Research into local histories and ecologies informs work created for the exhibition and is further expanded upon in the accompanying events programme.
Video and mixed media works also draw on material gathered from the Arctic Ocean in the Svalbard Archipelago, The Sea of Hebrides and Long Beach Peninsula in the Pacific Northwest, to reflect on disappearing, threatened and polluted landscapes. Other fieldwork undertaken feeds into work that considers the human experience of dislocation from nature and the need for faith, hope and resilience.
Fragility and vulnerability are embodied in layered works on paper, a large suspended sculpture made from delicate compostable material and living installations incorporating transient elements that transform over the exhibition period. Etchings and spatial interventions explore the use of the natural world as human resource and land as a site of geopolitical conflict. Global data security, with its increasing reliance on satellite technology exposed to the solar storms of space weather, is questioned in a multi-screen installation.
In tackling concepts of the perilous, the vulnerable and the lost, Life Boat raises the alarm on the passive position of waiting for rescue and encourages urgent action in troubled waters.
A reading list and research material will be available in the gallery.
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“How do you calculate upon the unforeseen? It seems to be an art of recognizing the role of the unforeseen, of keeping your balance amid surprises, of collaborating with chance, of recognizing that there are some essential mysteries in the world and thereby a limit to calculation, to plan, to control.”
Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Introduction
Participating artists
Friday 5 April
3:30pm - 5:30pm
Low Tide Walk in Deptford Creek - led by Creekside Discovery Centre
Meet at Creekside Discovery Centre at 3:30pm, 14 Creekside, Deptford, London, SE8 4SA
Explore the Creek with Creekside’s experts and find out about the local and natural history of this amazing urban space. This low tide walk lets you get onto the river bed safely with the help of a guide. Waders, rain gear and mud sticks are provided.
The walk will include discussion of the changing ecology of the Creek and artist Anne Krinsky’s project about vulnerable wetlands and climate change. Anne has been working on an extended project about vulnerable wetlands and climate change and will be showing work on this theme in the APT exhibition Life Boat. She is interested in exploring connections between the ecology of the Creek and the experience and observations of Creekside’s naturalists, her wetlands project and the exhibited works of the other artists that respond to local ecologies.
Tickets for Low Tide Walk - £15 for adults / £10 per child aged 8 - 17 years
Places are limited to 30 – please book through this link
The low tide walk involves walking in the mud and is not accessible for those with limited mobility. Refreshments and tour of the Life Boat exhibition at APT Gallery after the Low Tide Walk are free and open to all.
5:30pm - 7:30pm
Refreshments and tour of the Life Boat exhibition at APT Gallery (2 minute walk from Creekside Discovery Centre
Saturday April 6
2:30pm – 4:00pm
FIELDWORK AS PRACTICE
A performance / A conversation
‘Fieldwork’ can be seen as a gathering of material, a line of enquiry responding to a particular site, a direct physical engagement where unexpected discoveries continue to unfold.
Artist Caroline AreskogJones’ practice is grounded in this approach. Following time in the Sea of Hebrides with ‘Sail Britain’, she presents within ‘Life Boat’, a moving image projection entitled ‘Sounding Line’ which incorporates captured audio and visual recordings gathered whilst afloat. It questions the impact of our sonic human interference beneath the fragile ocean, and Composer and Musician Oskar Jones, who created the soundtrack, shall perform this live in situ at the start of the event.
Caroline has more recently been responding to an archive within the Natural History Museum considering working ‘in the field’ from an alternative, more historical perspective and a focus on the Cetacean Collection..
This dynamic conversation offers a unique opportunity to bring together Oliver Beardon (Founder and Skipper of ‘Sail Britain’) Richard Sabin (Principal Curator of Mammals at the Natural History Museum, London) and Sophie Nicolov (AHRC Early Career Research Fellow, Natural History Museum, London) for a discussion around the potential overlaps between ‘field’ and research, artistic practice and ecological activism.
Free Event at APT Gallery.
Seats can be booked through this link.
Sunday April 7
2:00pm – 3:30pm
Homma Meridian and the Secret of Invisible Ink/Fire Etching Workshop at APT Gallery
Artist Kaori Homma will reveal her secret technique using Invisible Ink as part of the Aburidashi/Fire Etching process which historically was used primarily for espionage rather than artistic purposes.
The workshop will include a fascinating illustrated presentation on the history of this process and how it relates to Homma’s own art practice and her Homma Meridian Project, an installation of which will be sited in the gallery as part of the Life Boat exhibition.
The workshop will also host the international launch of a publication on The Homma Meridian in collaboration with Street Road Artists Space, Pennsylvania, United States.
Homma states: “As with the Greenwich Prime Meridian Line, boundaries and demarcations are necessarily a means of orientating ourselves within the increasingly multi-cultural, multi-ethnic social context we face in this shrinking world. However, at the same time these demarcations and boundaries also create tensions and barriers. The idea behind the Homma Meridian Project is to draw an imaginary line which points to the North and South Pole in a specific location, using ephemeral material, which acts as a substitute for the “Prime Meridian”.
During the workshop there will be plenty of opportunity for hands-on experience using invisible ink to create your own ‘fire etching’ to take home. All Materials are supplied
Everyone is welcome including those with no prior experience in the arts. The workshop is aimed at adults but children are welcome if they are supervised by an accompanying adult.
Tickets - £15
Places are limited to 20 – please book through this link