The show unfolds across three spaces: Visitors first enter a replica of Es Devlin’s south London studio, full of 50 chalk and charcoal portraits in progress. The second room presents a new edition of her projection-mapped Congregation installation, first shown at St Mary Le Strand in October.
The third room contains a series of new works including painted LED screens and projection mapped painted glass layered portraits. Each portrait has a story of identity, belonging and expectation, how they arrived or why they left, one arrived via boat, another by a truck smuggled like cargo years ago. Some sound confident finding their feet, others express the doubt or unwelcoming they had in their new communities. The LED screens light up and the voice of the person pictured tells a part of their story. Every sentence profoundly hitting home, bringing the faces to life, Delvin’s B&W pencil drawings have a life, for a minute you are there with them. We don’t need to be told much to have a big insight into the refugee journey. Some more harrowing then others.
The exhibition is set like a studio in Somerset’s House West Wing taking you into the impressive works of the artist extremely large drawings on the walls some going up to the ceilings. From the entrance there are single portraits, uniform in pencil.
“I began each portrait without knowing my sitter/co-author’s story. For the first forty-five minutes I was drawing not only a portrait of a stranger, but also a portrait of the assumptions I inevitably overlay: I was drawing my own perspectives and biases. I was trying to draw in order to better perceive and understand the structures of separation, the architectures of otherness that I suspect may stand between us and the porosity to others that we are capable of feeling when these structures soften.”
Es Devlin
Over a period of four months, 50 strangers arrived, one by one, at Es Devlin’s studio in south London. She knew only their first name and that, at some point in their life, they sought refuge in London. She made chalk and charcoal portraits of each participant, carrying out the first 45 minutes of the drawing session without talking, and without any knowledge of her sitter/co-author’s story or circumstances. After 45 minutes the drawing was paused while the co-author told Devlin their story. She then resumed the drawing and completed the work while listening to podcasts about the conflict from which her sitter sought sanctuary.
The recreation of Devlin’s studio includes footage of the portraits being drawn as well as notes, sketches, books and research materials, painted studies and a short film about the making of the work.
In the second room, Congregation, the drawings are presented as a projection-mapped tiered structure similar to the one shown at St Mary Le Strand church in October. The sound installation, by Polyphonia, includes poetry by the Kinshasa born poet JJ Bola as well as the voices of many of the other co-authors. The score includes fragments of Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, the soundtrack to the drawing sessions. It culminates in a reworking of Anton Bruckner’s sacred motet Locus Iste (This Place) which fuses the voices of the London Bulgarian Choir, The South African Cultural Gospel Choir UK, Genesis Sixteen and The Choir of King’s College London.
The projected film sequence has been created in close collaboration with filmmaker Ruth Hogben, Treatment Studio and choreographer Botis Seva, and features dancer Joshua Shanny-Wynter.
The final room introduces a series of new works, including a painted plasma TV and projection-mapped layers of painted glass over chalk and charcoal portraits.
A collaboration with The Courtauld, King’s College London, and UK for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.
