On launch , Bethlem Gallery (https://bethlemgallery.com/) 21st June - 17th September
Exhibition: Unable to Think Without Touching
ORTUS
Open 8am-4pm, Mon-Fri
Open now at the ORTUS, 82-96 Grove Lane, London, SE5 8SN.
Featuring artists who combine physical and digital approaches in the making and sharing of their art; connecting people through embodied experiences of the world. Unable to Think Without Touching looks at the importance of bodily experiences and the use of digital technologies to connect with other people through the pandemic and beyond.
The relationship between our bodies and our environment may have changed through the pandemic and through lockdown, but what does the end of lockdown signify for people living with chronic illness, physical disabilities and mental health conditions, some of whom were already living in a state of isolation pre-pandemic? The exhibition features four artists who have developed inspiring artistic projects born out of the constraints and limitations of isolation and illness.
This is an exhibition about how digital and digital art enables connections and has changed during the pandemic.
Artist Liz Atkin started using #texturehuntergatherer on 12 March 2020 on social media. In unsettling times throughout the pandemic, this creative refocus helped her ‘manage my anxiety & skin picking’. Through Liz’s photographs of various textures, she found on her daily walks, she invited others to slow down, take time to notice and to capture textures; to ‘find solidarity in minutiae’. The hashtag become popular with people from all over the world experiencing similar limitations to their daily lives, taking up the call to hunt textures, capture them and share them with the growing online community. The exhibition will feature various images from the #texturehuntergatherer and over the summer, Liz will be working with people accessing mental health services and staff at the Maudsley Hospital to run texture hunter gatherer walks of local area.