Pace is delighted to announce the inaugural program for its new London gallery located on Hanover Square, opening fall 2021. On view between October 8 and November 6, pioneering multidisciplinary artist Torkwase Dyson will transform the third gallery with Liquid a Place: In Two Acts. Part of Pace Live, the gallery's multidisciplinary live art program, this collaborative performance and sculptural installation interrogates issues of environmental racism and spatial liberation in contemporary society.
Dyson describes her practice through the lens of painting while working across a breadth of mediums, including performance, sculpture, film, and drawing among others. Dyson's work facilitates conversations around the relationship between Black and Brown bodies and the surrounding environment, using her incisive and original vision to explore the continuity between ecology, infrastructure, and architecture across time and space. With significant environmental projects in the US, and her ongoing involvement in the multidisciplinary ecological project Back to Earth at the Serpentine Gallery, this exhibition comes at an inspired moment in Dyson's thinking on black spatial liberation now.
The multimedia installation that forms Liquid a Place: In Two Acts will serve as a stage for Dyson and a range of collaborators, including South London-based musician and writer Gaika, poet Dionne Brand, and critical race theorist Christina Sharpe. The program will also feature choreographers, dancers, and poets that will perform under Dyson's direction in a series of live events throughout the gallery's opening week.
Conceived as a second iteration of her 2019 piece I Can Drink the Distance: Plantationocene in Two Acts, performed at Pace in New York, Liquid a Place takes water as a material and symbol to explore historical and contemporary ecological racism in relation to the current climate crisis. In Dyson's words, 'This durational performative piece uses liquidity as an organising principle to think through atmospheres, memories, refusals, and liberations in Black bodies. Thinking through relations of scale, distance, systems, and movement in cities, Liquid a Place considers the complexities of memory and liquidity through the body.'
First launched in 2019, Pace Live encompasses performance, music, dance, film, conversation, and new live art commissions to examine the intersection of art forms and provide opportunities to connect with the public in new ways. Pace Live is helmed by Mark Beasley, Curatorial Director at Pace and former Curator of Media and Performance Art at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. Liquid a Place: In Two Acts epitomises this multidisciplinary focus. Dyson will also form a central component of Pace's Frieze London presentation this fall.
Approaching its 10th anniversary in the capital, the Hanover Square gallery underscores Pace's commitment to the city of London as a singular cultural community and one of the great international art world hubs. Embarking upon a new era in its new space, Pace will present an expanded program that combines an ambitious exhibition schedule with regular multidisciplinary events via its Pace Live platform.
Pace's new London gallery has been designed by architect Jamie Fobert Architects. Fobert enjoys a longstanding relationship with Pace having been involved with the original gallery on Lexington Street in 2011. For Hanover Square, Fobert will completely transform the interior architecture of the existing building to incorporate flexible galleries across two floors. The levels will be connected by a feature staircase rendered in black steel, giving the impression of a fully integrated space. The new modular layout will allow for dynamic presentations and will accommodate installations of works ranging from intimate to monumental in scale.
Press release courtesy Pace Gallery.
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