such tender bodies cannot bear so much pressure

Lauren Printy Currie | Claricia Parinussa | Tako Taal

20 October – 4 November 2018
Sat–Sun, 11—5pm or by appointment

Preview: 19 October 2018, 7–9pm

Performances: Friday 19, Sunday 28 October and Sunday 4 November.

Rhubaba presents such tender bodies cannot bear so much pressure, a group exhibition that explores the language of gestures. Newly commissioned works by Lauren Printy Currie and Claricia Parinussa will be shown alongside Tako Taal’s You Know it but it Don’t Know You.

The expression of meaning through gesture can transcend the barriers of verbal and written language. Gestural patterns are learned, intentionally and unintentionally, through and for repetitive tasks in labour processes. Gestural language is also forged through daily movements that can strengthen, affirm or contest meanings in our interactions. Through different approaches to the subject, both in material and content, this exhibition invites us to consider how we learn and hold gestures in our bodies. In movement, object, and writing, such tender bodies cannot bear so much pressure will bring attention to the dissemination and use of gestures for communication and labour.

Three cumulative performances devised by Claricia Parinussa will take place during the exhibition, amongst new sculpture by Lauren Printy Currie and a film by Tako Taal made during her residency at the Gambia Hospitality Institute in 2017.

Further Information:

Claricia Parinussa is an Indonesian-Netherlands movement researcher, artist, producer and curator. Her current research project the sky was pink explores the diasporic body through the notion of a body-schema; an ecology of living and sedimented movement languages, embodied experience, trauma and physical memory. Claricia is currently Associate Artist with Dance Base, Edinburgh and Project X Dance, Glasgow. Recent/current projects include the sky was pink: triptych UK tour, Imprints (Close Your Eyes and-) collaboration with Mark Bleakley, Basic Mountain, Into the Mountain with Simone Kenyon and There is Movement with Corin Sworn as part of Work House, Glasgow International 2018.

Lauren Printy Currie (born Glasgow 1985) works in sculpture, performance and writing investigating how a sculptural enquiry can find form in language. Her installations are created in response to specific contexts and extended periods of research. The artist presents various encounters with material – where objects are formed in writing, performances are imagined as sculpture, images recorded as text. Considering how an engaged politic can provide a useful tool for an interrogation of materiality, the artist uses installation, writing and voice to describe varying registers of embodiment as they oscillate between subject and object positions. Recent exhibitions include ‘settings’ 2017, the men and women in the text are referred to as, Stirling; ‘her body remembered a night-blooming cereus, sweated industry and salt (what came near)’ 2017, Glasgow Women’s Library & Travelling Gallery, ‘a feeling of and, a feeling of if, a feeling of but, a feeling of by, a feeling of blue, a feeling of cold’ 2017, Cove Park (Edition 1) and Platform (Edition 2) and; If by chance when we are walking, we happen to walk in step’ 2017, CCA Glasgow as part of 2HB journal.

Tako Taal is an artist, filmmaker and programmer based in Glasgow. Born in Wales to Gambian and Welsh parents, her practice uses personal narratives to trace the shifts, merge and splits in boundaries between body, land and state. Her work has screened across the U.K and in Canada and she has been nominated for the Berwick New Cinema Award (2018). Recent exhibitions include, Inherited Premises, Grand Union, (Birmingham) and Compound, Intermedia Gallery, CCA (Glasgow).