This February BPS celebrates LGBTQIA+ History month with a series of performances, talks, exhibitions and live art events.

What does “queer spirit” mean for visual artists in their practice nowadays? 

How can a new generation of queer artists create space for themselves and their community through materiality and image construction that goes beyond vanity, hypersexuality and exaggerated gender performativity? 

Living in different timelines of LGBTQ+ movements and constantly negotiating with complex power dynamics from an intersectional and cross-cultural perspective, queer artists today are seemingly inventing new art vocabulary and approaches to address their desire, and concerns. 

Fabricating and manifesting 

Problematizing and indicating 

Transgressing and redefining 

With no guaranteed destinations, 14 Artists from RCA Sculpture are going to show you something instead of telling you something. 

It’s stormy and it’s souly. 

It’s SOFT and it’s HARD. 

Artists

Annette Warner, Carlota Bulgari, Elena Hoskyns-Abrahall, Emma Sheehy, Hongmin An, Jim Rampage, Jingyue Gong, Leonie Cameron, Rose Arbuthnott, Sean Synnuck, Shuochun Xiang, Sojung Park, Yichen Li & Ling Tang, Yuqing Lin

Poster design: Yuqing Lin

TOUGHNESS AND TENDERNESS

21 – 25 February 2023

Private View Wednesday 22nd February

A probe into the waltzing tension between toughness and tenderness

This collective exhibition of queer artists, celebrates the building of a culture around symbols of identity and ways of being. Red-lips, fluidity, fire, softness, caress, tight, kiss, scratch, cold, leather, pumping, flesh, breeze. Collaging a sense of self and community within contradictions and between binaries..

Exhibiting Artists include :  Cris Volpe, Hanon, Imogen Cleverley, Jesse Glazzard, Jody Evans, Josiah Moktar, Juliusz Grabianski, Kia Matanky-Becker, Maria Mautino, Maite de Orbe, Jessie Patrick-Hooper, Meg Vaughan, Annalisa Hayes, Eleanor Daly, Martha Summers 

Originally inspired by poetry on queer relationships/erotica, this group exhibition responds to identification through sculpture, digital art, photography, spoken word, poetry, painting, video and installations. 

“Toughened, turning the other cheek, and turning it again to receive a lover’s kiss,

choose for tonight, tough or tender, and choose again in the morning.

knowing that you can see through the act.

Leather cracks in the tender crevices

all my strength to hold you down and to hold you up.”

Join us at Bermondsey Project Space this LGBTQIA+ History Month for Our Survival: Archiving Queer History. A screening of 5 short films by emerging artists and filmmakers including documentary, drama, comedy and dance films, followed by the premier of Surviving the Ashes and a talk on Queer archiving by Photographer and academic Laura Migliorino.

Miglorino will talk on her project The Hidden Life of Books which explores the GLBTQIA+ Tretter archive at The University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Her poroject pushes to collect and preserve Queer history, and explores the ‘claiming trend’ which presses the history community to acknowledge the queerness of people in history who never ” came out “. Some examples include Alexander the Great, King James I, Queen Anne, Virginia Wolfe etc. Laura Migliorino is a professor of photography at Ramsey Community College. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Walker Art Center, Weisman Museum in Minneapolis and The Minnesota Center for Book Arts. She has exhibited internationally for over 30 years. Migliorino’s work has been featured in the Huffington Post, DOMUS Magazine, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and DWELL Magazine. She is a 2021/22 Fulbright scholar at Eccles Center for American Studies at The British Library in London.

Films showing

Dykeotomy – Jo Watters

Take It Off… Take It All Off – Thomas Roughan

Loved Girls Wear Short Shorts – Megan Teo

House of Victories – Matt Felman

Buoyed

Tuesday 28 February 6 – 9 pm

A multi-disciplinary exhibition exploring queerness in relation to floating, drowning, sinking, dripping

Come along to the opening reception of Buoyed a multi-disciplinary exhibition featuring works by Kia Matanky-Becker, Cris Volpe, Andia Coral Newton, Abigail Jacqueline Jones, Delia Detritus, Poppy Tingay, H Holliday and Miles Simpson.

Buoyed is a watery exploration of queer bodies and a queer exploration of water bodies.

“Let the tide tease you out to sea. Ponder puddles and scrub the scum that collects at the bottom of the bath. Taste the salt on our teeth.”

Expect puddles of poetry, saturated sculpture, floating photography, tidel waves of tapestry.

Let’s get wet.

This is a one-night-only exhibition, come and see it before the tide washes us all away

LGBTQIA+ PERFORMANCES

TEEF

Monday 6 February 7 – 9 pm

TEEF is a fringe theatre show exploring hidden queerness and inter-class relationships. A delicious deep dive into attraction, embarrassment and lost teeth

HYSTERICAL SOCIAL Club

Tuesday 7 February 7 – 9 pm

Social Club is a one-off fundraising event brought to you by the 7organisers of Hysterical, centring women and LGBTQIA+ artists

Bermondsey Project Space partners with Hysterical to bring you an evening of socialising, performance and talks.

Hysterical, founded by @beeillustrates + @cheerupluv is a platform for centring women and people of marginalised genders whose work is focussed on community, activism and uplifting the voices of those around them. This event at Bermondsey Project Space is a fundraiser for Hysterical’s 2023 charitable exhibition and projects.

The evening will consist of a mixer, performances, and an opportunity to make connections with fellow creatives, as well as a chance to chat with the 2022 Hysterical alumni and Hysterical 2023 artists! There will be a Q+A session with @beeillustrates and @elizahatch, founder of @cheerupluv, as well as performances by some amazing queer creatives (TBA!!)

There will also be a variety of artworks, crafts and merchandise for sale by @beeillustrates and @cheeruplove

Doors 7.00pm

Talk/Q&A session: 7.30 – 8.00

live music performance 8.20 – 8.50

Ends 9pm

t’ARTopia

Wednesday 8 February 7.15 – 9.30 pm

Tart-Press comes to Bermondsey Project space for t’ARTopia, a night of art words and music from some of our most delicious t’ARTs.

We are really excited to be bringing t’ARTopia to Bermondsey Project Space as part of Performance Week for LGBTQIA+ History Month.

We have invited some of the wonderful contributors to t’ART Magazine plus some of our favourite performers to entertain you all, at a night that will be nothing short of t’ARTopian.

We will be raising money for gender affirming surgery funds with this evening’s raffle, so come with a couple of quid, win art and raise money for good causes!

Doors 7.15pm

Performances Start: 7.30pm

Event Ends: 9.30pm

Queer Noise X

Thursday 9 February 7 – 10 pm

The one-year anniversary of Queer Noise! Bringing you the best queer poetry, music and comedy. Fundraising for The Outside Project.

Join us for the anniversary edition of Queer Noise, a monthly poetry and performance night platforming London’s best, spoken-word artists and musicians. A percentage of ticket sales will be donated to The Outside Project supporting homeless LGBTQIA+ People

Get ready for a similtaniously silly and sensitive exploration of queer identity, community and friendship.

After a year of sold-out events, Queer Noise is back with an all star line up of incredible performers.

This one is not to be missed! There will also be a selction of prints, zines and gorgeous queer crafts on sale!

Hosted by:

Kia Matanky-Becker and Grace Quigley

Featuring:

SL Grange, Norma Night, Nina Mdwaba ( AKA Boldie ), Midori Jaeger, kal and Karima Francis

Special guest artist to be announced!

This is a seated event please arrive on time for a 7.30 start if you can!

Doors 7pm

Act 1: 7.30pm – 8.pm

Interval: 8 – 8.15

Act 2: 8.15pm – 8.45pm

interval 8.45 – 9pm

Act 3: 9pm – 10pm

RICH MAN’S SLUG PRESENTS: A full day of slugging

Saturday 10 February 12.30 – 9 pm

A full day of Activities led by Rich Mans Slug to celebrate LGBTQIA+ History Month. Two daytime workshops and a night of performance!

This LGBTQIA+ History Month, Rich Mans Slug are back at Bermondsey Project Space . Rich Man’s Slug is a a collective of innovative movement and dance artists who comically and courageously explore queerness in all its forms. After six months of sold-out events, Rich Man’s Slug are excited to not only be bringing you another night of fantastic performances but also two interactive daytime performance workshops. Get your tickets now before they are gone!

Feel free to join us for the just daytime interactive workshops, just the evening performance event, or both!

Daytime Workshops from 12.30 – 3.30pm. Evening Performance from 7 – 9pm

BUILDING IMAGINED SOCIETIES 12.30 am – 1.30 pm 

( Stay for the whole workshop or drop in any time between 12.30 and 1.30pm )

We invite you to join us in building a collectivly imagined society. Using the idea of pillow forts and gibberish we attempt to re-connect with childish play. You’re welcome to watch, come and visit, stay for a while or build it with us. Come along and have some silly fun.

The workshop will be run from 12.30-13.30. We will be building our pillow forts in 20 minute intervals followed up by a 10 minute chat between the performers and the audience. You’re welcome to stay for as long as you’d like.