Exhibitions Hub commissions new performance work

Goldsmiths MFA Fine Art graduate Krystle Patel has been selected for the 2024 Exhibitions Hub Alumni Commission Award, in partnership with the Live Art Development Agency (LADA) and contemporary arts organisation Forma.

Over the next six months, the Award will provide financial support for Krystle’s research as well as mentoring from members of staff at LADA, Forma, and Goldsmiths.

Krystle, who graduated in 2022, said: “I'm looking forward to working with both LADA and Forma to research staging in performance as part of my long form project, ‘Possession’. Using LADA's archives of art writing and experimental theatre alongside the architecture of Forma's event space, I will develop a performance that plays with light and spatial sound while considering notions of permission and control.”

Krystle describes how the project has developed over time, having “evolved from ongoing work into the limitations and violence of the term ‘British – Asian’ as well as frustrations with the current expectations and impositions of the art world with respect to identity politics and fixed notions of being. Possession here is seen in the multiple, as trance like possession through rhythm, possession of the body and desire, and possession of culture and identity as commodifiable objects.”

Goldsmiths Exhibitions Hub aims to bring artistic research and practice to wider external audiences. The Alumni Commission Award is one of a number of initiatives run by the Exhibitions Hub that seeks to champion critical, experimental work. It connects Goldsmiths-trained creative practitioners with archives and exhibition spaces, building individual and institutional relationships and directly supporting them to produce a new body of work.

They added: "It was clear to us that Krystle’s ongoing project ‘Possession’ would benefit from this dedicated development period, the commission would give her an environment to pursue alternative research areas and to experiment with new working methods. Her practice exemplifies what we seek to nurture in our creative students and graduates here at Goldsmiths, and we are enormously proud to support the next phase of its development.”