The Boat
You are invited to The Boat, an exhibition event by Lawrence Blackman exploring memory, fantasy, nomadism, and shared human experience. We live in a time of fractiousness and division coupled with a sense of movement and human flow. The boat becomes a touchstone for our commonality and a sense of travelling through, both individually and collectively. We are all in the end both in our own and the same boat, and the future is made of empathy.
The Show
The show, happening over a week, is based around a centrepiece exhibition of artwork by Lawrence exploring the theme of the Boat through multimedia artwork. This includes drawings, sound, and assemblage.
The week will include a series of events with artists and collectives Lawrence has encountered in his creative journey. This will fold in his curatorial practice with events exploring stories, poetry and theatre based around the theme of nomadism and understanding. We will be happy to be joined by Rawanee Creatives and Rae Lewis, whose work directly addresses and is based in the direct themes of empathy, human flow, and the connected experiences. Also joining us will be Bettina Schroeder, who will be sharing her own experiences and also co-curating.
As such, the show becomes a context for encounter, a space for sharing and empathy building, of which the boat itself is just a starting point.
The week will also include ‘Build the Boat’, a workshop event over several days where everyone will be invited to build a boat together which will be part of the show as an ephemeral sculpture.
The Work
The Boat is based on experiences of travel across a lifetime and a trip across Thailand last year. Drawings made from photographs of travel were begun with the desire to hold on, through drawing, to the feeling of travel and the other self that exists there. In the developing work, themes emerged including how we access our memories, how technology directs our sight, how technology interacts with our relationship to memory, and what memory is, especially when experienced across time. Is it static? Or more like a dream, fluent and changing?
All of the work reflects a transient quality. This will include a collection of drawings made in cafes (themselves temporary places of passing through), made from photographs of memories on napkins, wooden cutlery and other throwaway items. There will also be murals, window drawings, projected imagery, and captured sound.
These are created to discuss the beauty of experience as well as how our perspective can be truncated, controlled or manipulated by technology. In this way it will explore the many ways we can experience memory, their preciousness, ultimate fragility and changing nature, and how they interact.
Support
As a try before you buy, you can take a look online at some of the artworks that will be included and to support the show, purchase. They will be available at the show however you can pre-order to reserve with a discount. 50% of the profits will go to BGBJ, a community hub in Bantar Gebang, the largest landfill in South East Asia, to whom Lawrence has eternal gratitude for transforming his perspective and exploding his life and work
You can find out more about The Boat, the work, and the ideas behind it at
https://www.instagram.com/theboatexhibition/
Co-curated with and with great thanks to Bettina Schroeder.
Also check out other Arts events in London, Exhibitions in London, Workshops in London.
