During the final hours of the exhibition “Words fail me”, Adam Gallagher, Curtly Thomas and Ruth Angel Edwards presented a choreographed audio visual performance during which the sculptures present in the space interrogated each other. Playing with and against their own representations, the sculptures will be transformed to take on various roles, shifting to embody a complex range of subjectivities. Finally, returning back to their original forms, they will be removed from the space and burnt in celebration, as effigies.

Incorporating elements of fancy dress, carnival mythologies and ‘creepypasta’ online games that blur the boundaries between reality and fiction, the performance aims to unpack some of the issues brought up by the show. It will use the idea of ‘culture jamming’ to examine exotification, appropriation and exchange as it occurs across music and countercultural histories. The performance seeks to disrupt the institutionalised art space and consider new positive ways to create.

Ruth Angel Edwards is a multimedia artist whose work explores the communication of ideology through pop culture, drawing from mainstream and subcultural youth movements both past and present. Recent exhibitions and projects include ‘! EFFLUENT PROFUNDAL ZONE !’, Bonnington Gallery, Nottingham (2018), ‘Enema Salvatore!’, Almanac, Turin (2017), ‘Light Deception / The Great Imitator’, Auto Italia, London (2017), a solo exhibition at Arcadia Missa, London (2016), ‘Info Pura’, The Residence Gallery, London (2016), ‘Derivatives and Futures’, Human Resources, Los Angeles (2016), and ‘A British Art Show’, MEYOHAS, New York (2015).

Adam Gallagher is an artist and writer from and based in London who works mainly through performance, challenging it’s reliance upon temporality and working against the performative-artist-ego. He self-publishes a series of pamphlets called ‘E.A.R.F’. The series transposes original fictionalised biographies that aim to dramatise instances in which disparate subjectivities appear, relate, contradict, and attempt to coexist, to form a picture of the fallout, failures and flatulence of global capitalism. Recent projects include: ‘War-Pig’, Local Project Space, (2017), and ’Polly Anything’, Lima Zulu (2017). Commissioned writing include ‘Special Category Status’ and ‘Trust’ for The Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis as part of their Post-Psychoanalysis event programme (2018) and ‘Extra Judicial Killing’ and ‘What did I do to deserve this?’, Montez Press, Interjection Calendar (2017).

Curtly Thomas plays with the polarities that construct identity, visibility and culture. He often works in collaboration across fields, across mediums, moving through commercial and non-commercial spaces. Currently, he is using music performatively and texturally to create immersive, fantastic environments. He goes under the shifting moniker clubcouture.xxx, clubcouture, ‘clubcouture’ and Ceremonial Acts.