Phoenix Art Space
Tessa Boffin’s artistic practice spanned photography, writing, performance and activism, consistently challenging dominant narratives around gender, sexuality and visibility. Boffin’s work remains urgently relevant to contemporary queer and feminist communities and this project asks what it means for an archive to be a generative, collective space.
The exhibition features work by Tessa Boffin archives and newly commissioned work from artists Sophie Mak-Schram and Leah McLaine, developed in direct response to Boffin’s images, pedagogy and politics. Both artists and the curatorial team have been immersed in extensive archival research, drawing on collections held by the University for the Creative Arts, The Estate of Tessa Boffin/The Gupta+Singh Archives and Hales Gallery (London and New York).
This project is grounded in a collective, intersectional approach to curatorial research, led by four emerging curators whose practices are rooted in queer and feminist frameworks: Polly Wright (Devonshire Collective, Eastbourne), Jazz Swali (BACKLIT, Nottingham), Ricardo Reverón Blanco (previously Aspex Portsmouth), and Danit Ariel (Photoworks).
Also showing at Phoenix Art Space:
Dates: 2- 31 October
Exhibition: Photo Fringe Collectives Hub
The Photo Fringe presents 8 photography collectives in the Collective’s Hub at Phoenix Art Space, curated under Phoenix’s theme of Future Histories. This theme encourages audiences to explore how the past continues to inform, configure, and sometimes overshadow the present. It also asks us to understand that we are not bystanders in the flow of history and compels us to consider how our actions today will shape tomorrow’s history.
