Amy Kingsmill – Light Source
- Date
- Friday 26 Jul 2024
- Venue
Live Art Development Agency
Event runs from 19:00-21:00. Doors open at 18.30
- Location
The Garrett Centre, 117 Mansford Street, London, E2 6LX
- Price
- Free, but please RSVP
Please join us on Friday 26 July 2024 at 7pm for an event performed, hosted and curated by artist and 2021-22 LADA Study Room resident Amy Kingsmill.
Light Source was a programme of 12 monthly talks and workshops exploring witch hunts and ritual performance hosted and curated by Amy. Using queer ritual and textile work, Light Source brought light to lost histories of persecuted people, primarily women, reclaimed and honoured them, and gave voice to the innocents killed in witch trials. The programme culminated in a performance at Colchester Arts Center (2022), and a live performance and a day festival at The British Library (2023) co-curated by Amy and Brett Walsh.
Amy will talk about her ongoing research for Light Source and present the video documentation of the performance at The British Library, which included the participation of actress Jenny Runacre.
Welcome to the new esoteric theatre. It’s not minimalist and it’s not maximal. Meaning a costume drama without sets. The iconography - yes archetypal - is pumped to cartoon colours and graphics. But the speed, the intention, is pure luxury. Amy Kingsmill straddles cabaret/trance/spectacle and infuses the space with exuberance
Light Source Finale
Light Source Finale performed by Amy Kingsmill at Festival of the Accused at British Library
Amy Kingsmill
Amy Kingsmill is a radical queer performance artist. Her work focuses on transformation and transcendence, combining beauty with arrestingly visceral actions. She produces minimalist, pain-based ritualistic performance exploring inherently feminist themes.
Since graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2013, Amy has performed internationally including SPILL Festival of Performance (2014), Franko B’s Untouchables (2015), Karachi Biennale (2017), Tempting Failure International Biennale of Performance Art & Noise (2018), Cite Des Artes (Paris, 2019), LAST Projects (Los Angeles, 2019). She has performed with Rhiannon Aarons in Los Angeles (2019), and with Rhiannon Aarons and Sheree Rose in London and Los Angeles (2015). She participated in Bruce La Bruce’s film The Visitor (2024), which premiered at Berlinale, and performed in London at A/POLITICAL 2023 as part of The Visitor exhibition as ‘The Mother’. Her project Light Source has been presented at Colchester Arts Centre (2022) and the British Library (2023).
Light Source
Light Source explores the use of body performance techniques and queer ritual and approaches them as an expanded context that includes the practice of queer people and women, while creating a space to share these techniques and real lives and histories. It engages with social histories of people persecuted and killed as ‘witches’, whilst exploring goddess worship, queer rites and rights to connect people through an exciting range of speakers – historians, specialists in witch trials, and queer performance artists who work on these themes. Working from Amy’s own personal experiences and that of other queer people and women who have dealt with persecution, the project engages with the concept of the Witch as a source of light, knowledge and healing, whilst simultaneously exploring the very real killing of thousands through the witch trials and other forms of persecution.
Light Source was funded by Arts Council England.
Access information
LADA and The Garrett Centre are wheelchair accessible by lift and provide gender inclusive bathrooms.
Should you have any particular access requirements, please email [email protected] and we will be happy to offer further support.
Banner image credit:
Amy Kingsmill, Light Source, Colchester Arts Centre. Image Darren Black
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