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Florence Peake: Vitalities

Discover a brand new exhibition in HOME's Main Gallery
Fri 9 Oct - Sun 31 Jan
Fri 9 Oct
-
Sun 31 Jan

See Florence Peake's latest exhibition in Manchester

 

About the exhibition

Vitalities is HOME’s Main Gallery exhibition of new work by internationally acclaimed artist Florence Peake. Her practice explores the choreographic potential between movement and production of traditional art materials, often using the body as an instrument or site of protest. This exhibition explores loss, grief, absence and what is left behind when a physical and material form has dissolved, been removed or died. Produced collaboratively with studio assistants, professional dancers and queer identifying individuals in Manchester, the exhibition is materialised through works on paper, moulded and poured gypsum plaster, cast concrete, pewter and activations performed throughout the duration of the exhibition.

Eight large luminescent sculptures made from plaster form key tenets throughout the exhibition. Through a process of reflection and catharsis the sculptures were created in carefully devised, movement informed workshops with individuals who have experience of grief. Made using traditional methods of casting in plaster, Peake poured plaster between participants, making solid the space between them. Upon drying, these porous, totemic works reveal densely textured surfaces, skin imprints/folds and fragments of clothing; the human trace visible, yet their presence absent. The work considers the stark encounter of that absence, the body/objects, their ghosts and invisible doubles.

The central space is immersed in sanguine red. Suspended moulded set plaster works produced with membrane-like hessian, appear as husks, shells, figures metamorphosed into an upturned archaeological dig; an enigmatic psychological landscape that defies the laws of physics; or cyclical allegory - the place we go when we return to nature. In the same space, cast concrete dumbbells are configured recumbent on the floor. Signifying the physicality of flesh, the corporeal and process of aging, the work suggests a reconciling of absence through surges of strength and resistance training.

The duality between absence and upsurge is continued in Peake’s chalk works on paper. They are composed as double acts - still life studies of immaterial spaces between held hands, paired with drawings demonstrating gravitational or erupted motions; the dialogue between absence and existence in perpetual flux.

Covering the central floating wall is a monumental work made from vigorous markings, engraved into thick black paper. Produced and performed in private, the enigmatic forms are instinctual. Appearing as remnants of ancient ritual or mark-making used to inscribe territory, scent or memory, it encourages us to think about time beyond our own. Cyclical rhythms are recuring themes throughout Peake’s work. Every fortnight, dancers will appear in the space, activating the exhibition with paint through gesture and movement, each time unique and nuanced.

In this work notions of rotation and renewal are threaded into queered perspectives on grief, temporality and natural processes. Through non-hierarchical, collaborative approaches to making, Peake subverts the permanency of traditional sculpture. Instead, absence is inverted, becoming its own autonomous form, and with that, a reconciliation and resignation with the passage of time - the sense of hope in the work is innate and the reverence for the mystery of existence is palpable.

 

Artists biography:

Florence Peake is a London-based artist who has been making solo and group performance works intertwined with an extensive visual art practice since 1995. Peake’s work has been shown internationally and across the UK in galleries, theatres and the public realm. The solo Touring Exhibition Factual Actual was presented at National Gallery (2021), Southwark Park Galleries (2022), Fruitmarket, Edinburgh (2023), Towner Gallery, Eastbourne and Liste Art Basel (2024).

Selected group shows and performances include Victoria Miro Gallery (2025), E-werk Luckenwald (2024), Gropius Bau (2022), British Art Show 9 (2021- 2022). Arsenic theatre and Sudpol Theatre, Switzerland (2020),Venice Biennale 2019; CRAC Occitanie, Sète, France (2018), London Contemporary Music Festival, UK (2018), De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, UK (2018); Palais De Tokyo, Paris, France (2018); Hayward Gallery, London UK (2018), Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, UK (2017), Studio Leigh, London UK (2017); Sara Zanin Gallery, Rome, Italy (2017); Serpentine, London UK (2016); Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2016); ICA, London (2016); Modern Art Oxford (2016); Harris Museum and Art Gallery (2015), BALTIC, Newcastle UK (2013), Frieze, London UK (2013), Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2012).

Peake is represented by Richard Saltoun Gallery.

 

Credits:

Florence Peake: Vitalities is curated by Clarissa Corfe.
Florence Peake: Vitalities is funded by Arts Council England, Henry Moore Foundation, Manchester City Council, Greater Manchester Combined Authority.
Vitalities is part of Your Meaning Not Your Materiality, commissioned by theCOLAB The Artist’s Garden, Hospitalfield and HOME.
Touring partners are Kunsthal Rønnebæksholm & Billedskolen Storstrøm and Lafayette Anticipations

 

Florence Peake’s Team:

Executive Producer: Caroline Smith
Tour and Live Producer: Eve Veglio-Hüner
Production and Studio Manager: Jim Tuck
Production assistant: Mathilda Laird
Pastoral support: Scarlet Ma and Valerie Gage
Choreographic support: Eve Stainton
Dramaturgical support: Uzma Hamid
Performers (London): Joe Moran, Donovan Morris, Catherine Hoffman, Rodrigo Peñalosa, Sophie Khan, Rachel Lopez de la Nieta
Performers (Manchester): Eve Stainton, Katye Coe, Charlie Morrissey, Ka Hei, Tilliana Greenwood, Amy Vorris, Eleanor Sikorski
Performers (Scotland): Scottish Dance Theatre company members and apprentices
Performers for sculptural moulds: Rachel Lopez de la Nieta, Wren Long, Valerie Gage
Access consultant: Shivaangee Agrawal
Fabricator: Assish Aubeeluck at Velouvre London
Environmental Consultancy: Jennifer Taillefer
Marketing photography: Sam Tingman

 

HOME collaborators:

Ember Girling, Hannah Leighton-Boyce, Jez Dolan, Melanie Cove, Redacted, Tina Ramos Ekongo

 

The artist would like to thank:

Launch Pad, France
Hogchester Farm Residency
Leeds Art Gallery
Edinburgh Sculpture workshop
Eve Stainton
Fabian Peake and all the artist’s family
Independent Dance
Scottish Dance Theatre
Northern School of Contemporary Dance
Somerset House

Henry Moore Foundation

With thanks to the Henry Moore Foundation.

Florence Peake: Vitalities

Gallery Opening Times:

Mon-Sat: 10:00-21:00

Sun: 11:00-21:00

The exhibition is free to attend but requires you to book.

 

Activation events will occur on set dates and times for this exhibition.


Find out more about here:

Activation events

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A visceral exploration of grief, absence and the traces left behind when bodies and materials change form.

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