BEACONSFIELD’S BUILDING BACK IN 1851

Since 1994 Beaconsfield has been a London laboratory dedicated to the exploration, evolution, and production of experimental art.

recent projects

MARKING BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2023

Beaconsfield marks Black History Month with collaborators past and present.

Tuesday 24 October 2023

Beaconsfield’s Environmental Artist in Residence Phoebe Collings-James leads the second in a series of reading groups where participants can read, sculpt or play with terracotta clay while discussing extracts from the book ‘A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None’ by Kathryn Yusoff.

Thursday 26 October 2023

Black Industrial Sound artists Trevor Mathison and Gary Stewart AKA Dubmorphology return to Beaconsfield for Black History Month to weave black histories into a specially commissioned electro-acoustic sound performance that will employ every aspect of the venue as a player in an immersive ambient score.

PAST PRESENT. Fragments of memory. Bucharest-Pompeii-London

Exhibition: 22 July – 12 August 2023

Wednesday – Saturday 12-5pm
Exploring the recuperation of cultural memory, Ioana Marinescu’s project works with the destruction of ancient Pompeii caused by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, alongside events in 1980s Bucharest, when a historic residential quarter of the city was razed to make way for Ceaușescu’s Palace of the Parliament or ‘People’s Palace’.

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news and events

CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2023
EARTH-READING WITH PHOEBE COLLINGS-JAMES
24 October 6-8pm
Beaconsfield’s Environmental Artist in Residence Phoebe Collings-James leads the second in a series of reading groups.

SONIC REFLECTIONS ON WINDRUSH WITH DUBMORPHOLOGY
26 October 7.30-11pm
Black Industrial Sound artists Trevor Mathison and Gary Stewart AKA Dubmorphology return to Beaconsfield for Black History Month to weave black histories into a specially commissioned electro-acoustic sound performance.

 

PAST PRESENT
Ioana Marinescu

Exhibition: 22 July – 12 August (Wednesday – Saturday, 12-5pm)

Exploring the recuperation of cultural memory, Ioana Marinescu’s project works with the destruction of ancient Pompeii caused by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, alongside events in 1980s Bucharest, when a historic residential quarter of the city was razed to make way for Ceaușescu’s Palace of the Parliament or ‘People’s Palace’. Working with Bucharest-based choreographers Smaranda Găbudeanu and Iulia Mărăcine and using archival image, video, soundscape, testimony and live performance, Marinescu traces both events and finds parallels in the sudden displacement of both populations.

Beaconsfield hosts the PhD cohort at the Royal College of Arts’ School of Arts and Humanities to present an exhibition, event and publication series.

Exhibition: 22 June – 1 July (Wednesday – Saturday, 12-5pm)

Earthwise invites a place of meetings and relations, without limit or system. A focus on the and and not the therefore … is driven by the gathering forces of ecological, social and psychological crises that pose an inescapable reality for artists today.

salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears
Nastja Säde Rönkkö

Residency: 23 January – 15 March (open by appointment)

Exhibition: 16 March – 6 May (Wednesday – Saturday, 12-5pm)

Nastja Säde Rönkkö, the third recipient of the Below Zero Finnish Art Prize, investigates relationships between the digital era, power, humanity and the future of our planet. For this commission she will develop three new moving image works on site, produced with Beaconsfield under the working title salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. Beaconsfield is in ‘Factory’ mode, with sculpture construction complete, the artist’s script in progress followed by Nastja filming (in the gallery and various sites across London) late February and installation leading up to the exhition opening in mid March.

BEACONSFIELD AND THE WILD ESCAPE
Beaconsfield is part of The Wild Escape, a major new project uniting hundreds of museums and galleries with schools and families to connect to the natural world in their local habitats. We will be working with local families and school children, ceramic artist Phoebe Collings-James and Rachael Nilssen of Mud Gang Pottery Studio, to contribute to re-wilding Kennington/Vauxhall while thinking about the role that earth or clay plays in our ecologies. These themes will be expanded in a public talk with Professor Kathryn Yusoff, author of A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (2019).

LUCY GREGORY WINS BLOOMING LAMBETH AWARD 2022 FOR BEACONSFIELD’S GARDEN-YARD
Congratulations to our brilliant horticulturalist Lucy Gregory, who won a Blooming Lambeth Award for Beaconsfield’s Garden-yard! Her ‘Best in Bloom’ 2022 award was presented in Lambeth Town Hall at a prizegiving event hosted by Arit Anderson, from BBC’s Gardeners’ World, and Incredible Edible Lambeth.

SYSTEMIC PERIPHERALISM
Mark Fell
8 October – 3 December 2022
Responding to Beaconsfield’s main gallery spaces, two new sonic installations mark a cautious return to public life, asking visitors to collectively engage in sensory exploration.

THE FINNISH SAUNA
Beaconsfield is delighted to host The Finnish Sauna this summer.
open for bookings
29 July – 15 October 2021

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