Hundred Years Gallery presents a collaboration between the live, interdisciplinary art organisations, Mellifera and Some Loose Assemblies.
Curators Emily Suzanne Shapiro and Claire Zakiewicz will convene prominent figures in the British art and new music worlds to perform collaborative new works focusing on communication between modes of perception through improvisation and experimentation.
This event will feature new works by Aurelie Freoua, Gerald Curtis and Claire Zakiewicz who will be performing live drawing and painting in collaboration with experimental musicians Steve Beresford, Emily Suzanne Shapiro, Douglas Benford, Megan Steinberg, Keiske Matsui and Peter Nagle.
The cycle of three 20 minute performances will be presented twice for two different audiences, at 7:00pm and 8:30pm. The venue ask audiences to respect social distancing and mask wearing. There will be a capacity of 10 tickets per time slot.
Audiences are invited to sign up for one of these two slots. Tickets here
Claire Zakiewicz is an interdisciplinary artist living in London and NYC. Her practice explores the (meta)physical relationships between sound and drawing and the processes that underlie our emotional relationship with art. She has a background in improvised and experimental music, which she incorporates into her contemporary art practice. Often working collaboratively, she explores performance, dance and acting methods as part of her drawing and painting process.
She was named in the New York’s top ten artists list in Art511 magazine in 2019. Zakiewicz has written a number of articles and essays on performing drawing. She contributed a chapter for The Aesthetics of Imperfection: Spontaneity, Flaws and the Unfinished (Bloomsbury), 2020.
Her works have been shown at galleries, performance venues and institutions including Tate Tanks and Tate Britain, for the exhibitions Tweet Me Up (2011) and Label (2012), at Landmark, Bergen for the performance Engastromyths Quakers and Shamans (commissioned by Ny Musikk, 2009) and most recently she produced a collaborative performance painting titled Writing the Future for Future Visions, Hounslow (2021), funded by the Arts Council, England. Past residencies have included Bill Young’s Dance Studio (New York), USF Bergen, (Norway), The Mothership (New York), Point B Worklodge (New York) and Cill Rialaig (Ireland). Zakiewicz studied at Chelsea College of Art, Anglia Ruskin University and London Metropolitan University.
Steve Beresford has been a central figure in the British and international spontaneous music scenes for over forty years, freely improvising on the piano, electronics and other things with people like Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Han Bennink, John Zorn and Alterations (with David Toop, Terry Day and Peter Cusack).
He has written songs, written for large and small ensembles, and scored short films, feature films, TV shows and commercials. He was part of the editorial teams of Musics and Collusion magazines, writes about music in various contexts and was a senior lecturer in music at the University of Westminster. With Blanca Regina, he is part of Unpredictable Series, which produces events and sound and video recordings of experimental music and art.
Steve has worked with Christian Marclay on numerous Marclay mixed media pieces. He has also worked with The Slits, Najma Akhtar, Stewart Lee, Ivor Cutler, Prince Far-I, Alan Hacker, Tania Chen, Ray Davies, Mandhira de Saram, The Flying Lizards, Zeena Parkins, Helen Petts, Satoko Fukuda, The Portsmouth Sinfonia, Hyelim Kim, Ilan Volkov, Rachel Musson, Vic Reeves, Sarah Gail Brand, Lore Lixenberg and many others.
Beresford has an extensive discography as performer, arranger, free-improviser, composer and producer, and was awarded a Paul Hamlyn award for composers in 2012.
In 2021, Bloomsbury published a book by Andy Hamilton: ‘Pianos, Toys, Music and Noise: Conversations with Steve Beresford’.
Aurelie Freoua is a French artist and performer living and working in London. She originally studied Mathematics and Economics in Paris but went on to study art and completed an MA in Fine Art at Camberwell College of Arts, London 2016. She also participated in the Slade Summer School.
Since then, her paintings have been exhibited in several group shows in London, New York, Miami, Paris and the South of France. Aurelie had several solo shows in London, including ‘Symphony of Colours’ in Mayfair (2017). Her artworks have featured in poetry collections including ‘Echoing’ published by Ampersand. She created a work specially for the Bonhams’ auction in support of the Grenfell Tower victims (2018). She has taken part in workshops organised by the Digital Maker Collective at Tate Exchange, Tate Modern.
Over the past four years, Aurelie collaborated more and more with the Vortex Jazz Club and improvising musicians, creating music and art simultaneously with the musicians and artists using similar sonic and visual approach. She has improvised live painting in response to music during The London Jazz Festival in 2017 and 2019; she curates and performs in multidisciplinary, experimental and immersive live performances called ‘Resonances’, merging visual art, musical performances, poetry and dance. Aurelie has designed covers for albums by Raphael Clarkson, Paulo Duarte and Henrik Jensen, released on Babel Label in 2019 and 2020.
She has recently worked on set designs and costumes for several theatre plays at Theatro Technis alongside her acting performances. She created a mural painting ‘Misterioso’ (7m20 x 5m50) in Shoreditch, which was the backdrop for ‘The Dancing Wall’ performance. Aurelie is currently developing projects with musicians, poets and dancers for upcoming events.
Through her work, Aurelie aims to explore and transcend such notions as the invisible, movement, ephemerality and the intangibility of emotion through vivid colours and harmonious compositions of form, line and light. Throughout her practice she values authentic representation and intensity in a process of ‘making visible’.
website: www./aureliefreoua.com
Emily Suzanne Shapiro is a Canadian bass clarinetist and clarinetist dedicated to exploring and creating new music. Emily has a special love for the sound and scope of bass instruments and constantly pushes the limits of what she can do on bass clarinet.
Alongside performing contemporary music on bass clarinet, Emily is involved in many other musical endeavours. Composing and improvising are central to her career, and she has been an active performer of Balinese gamelan for 10 years and has also explored jazz, klezmer, rock and electroacoustics. She is always seeking out new artistic experiences to enrich and motivate her work.
She is a proud member of Les Feuillus, the London Improviser’s Orchestra, the Corner Quartet and Lila Cita and has performed all over London, including iklectik, Cafe Oto, Hundred Years Gallery, LSO St Luke’s, the Vaults festival, the Barbican and many more. She founded and manages the Mellifera arts platform, a monthly interdisciplinary arts performance event, and the Lonely Impulse Collective, a daily solo improvisation project.
Outside of music, Emily loves gardening, running, whisky and making friends with animals.
website: www.emilysuzanneshapiro.com
Douglas Benford has been involved in various audio genres since the late 1980s, performing at many institutions and venues in the UK (Bristol’s Arnolfini, London’s Science Museum, Cafe Oto, Tate Modern, The Roundhouse, ICA and Glasgow’s CCA), as a composer and sound artist. He has performed at festivals worldwide and has installation work in numerous UK art spaces
Megan Steinberg is an experimental composer and abstract turntablist based in London. She works with found sound, chance procedures, graphic scores, quietness and microtonality.
Originally a jazz guitarist, Megan studied Composition at Brunel University where she fell into experimental music. After discovering free improv using objects, violin and cello, in 2016 she began performing free improv and experimental music for single-deck, analogue turntable.
Megan is studying a PhD at Royal Northern College of Music, where she has been appointed the Lucy Hale Doctoral Composer in Association with Drake Music. Her project is focused on the creation of works for Disabled musicians, new instruments and AI.
She has composed for incredible performers including Heather Roche, Juice Vocal Ensemble, Distractfold, Apartment House and Lore Lixenberg. In 2016, she was awarded the FI Williams Prize for Composition for her piece The Dying Sakura Tree. Her music has been performed at Kings Place and IKLECTIK in London, Grachtenfestival in Amsterdam, and Arts by the Sea Festival in Bournemouth, as well as on BBC Radio 3, Resonance FM and Threads Radio. Megan is a dedicated advocate for accessibility and representation in new music.
Peter Nagle is a composer, cellist and sound artist working with drones, loops, electronica and field recordings. As well as extensive solo work he has collaborated with a wide variety of musicians, artists and choreographers including Douglas Benford, Laura Cioffi, Dave Clarkson, Angharad Davies, Peter Falcolner, Irene Fiordilino, Steve Gisby, Rahel Kraft, Anthony Osborne, Misha Penton, Alwynne Pritchard, Carla Rees, Richard Sanderson, Emily Suzanne Shapiro, Tansy Spinks and Rahel Vanmoos.
Recent work includes The Convalescent, (performance/installation at APT Gallery Deptford, 2018), Congregation (ensemble performance/installation, premiered October 2019), An Equal and Opposite Reaction, (album, Linear Obsessional, 2019), the Nexus remote collaboration project (five EPs, 2021) and On Mute, a short horror film about video conferencing (2021). Invisible Cities will be released on Linear Obsessional in December.
Peter is a PhD candidate at Trinity Laban, researching drone as an agent of sonic identity and transformation.
Gerald Curtis has exhibited and performed nationally and internationally including Revolve Festival, Sweden and Lublin Performance Festival, Poland. His first solo show, Regeneration on Hounslow Heath (2019), was selected by Hounslow Creative People and Places to become part of their touring library programme. The exhibition incorporated a collection of photography, painting, video and performances. Most recently, he has collaborated with artist Claire Zakiewicz and Habib William Kherbek of the band Dirtagnan to produce a video performance, Writing the Future (2021) (forthcoming). Gerald Curtis is a recipient of the Time Space Money bursary from A-N and the Farnham Maltings No Strings Attached fund. Gerald graduated from the UCA, Canterbury with a BA (hons) Fine Art, 2009 and Royal College of Art, MA Painting (Performance Pathway), 2017.
Keisuke Matsui was born in Kyoto, Japan and now lives and works in London, he performs electric guitar, electronics, objects on albums with other central figures in the British experimental music scene. Matusi has also performed with and released numerous albums with other prominent artists.
