You Move Me

Friday 8 June, 2018

Press
Release

For
immediate release: 8
June 2018

YOU
MOVE ME

Gemma
Riggs, Laura Murphy & Melanie
Wilson

30 June–25 August 2018

Launch
and events Saturday 30 June 2018

You
Move Me is a new audio-visual installation made by three artists of
different disciplines in collaboration with the people in two
different European towns; Žagarė, Lithuania, and Northampton, UK.

In
each town, people were invited to take part in workshops with the
artists, exploring ideas of everyday, gestural movements. Together
they have created a new choreography, which has been performed and
recorded in each participant’s own domestic setting. You Move Me is
a meditation on gestural movement, portraiture and what it means to
move together as a group. It is a celebration of people living in
different geographical locations and how they are connected through
movement. The work explores collective and individual identities, our
quotidian actions and how we occupy our domestic spaces. It brings
private identities into the public realm. The work is an inquiry into
the idea of similarities and difference and the concept of
synecdoche, which makes visible our idiosyncrasies by bringing
similar elements together. Something unique and mesmerising happens
when individuals move in unison; our attention is brought to the
unique and distinctive nature of each person.

You
Move Me extends from a wider body of work developed since 2013 by
Laura Murphy and Gemma Riggs, whose collaborative research explores
the framing of the moving body. The core artist team for You Move Me
is formed of video artist Gemma Riggs, choreographer Laura Murphy and
theatre maker and sound artist Melanie Wilson. They have been joined
by a number of interdisciplinary collaborators including experimental
psychologist Jorina Von Zimmerman who has helped them explore the
concept of social synchrony and its implications from a behavioural
perspective. Also contributing to the project are artist and writer
Mary Paterson, artist and activist Susan Ryland as well as projection
designer Richard Moores.

Northampton
performers:

Ikran
Abdile

Siobhan
Auckland

Steve
Banks

Merete
Wells

Clare
Moss

Victoria
Whittaker

Žagarė
performers:

Brigita
Mitrikaite

Gabriele
Mitrikaite

Edmundas
Vaičiulis

Orinta
Orlickienė

Benedikta
McSharry

Židrija
Janušaitė

Rita
Plekaviciute

You
Move Me has been commissioned by NN Contemporary Art and developed by
Gemma Riggs. It has been supported using public funds from Arts
Council England.

About the artists:

Melanie
Wilson
(sound artist, writer and performance maker)

Melanie
Wilson is an award-winning sound artist, writer and performance
maker. Her work employs theatre, sound art, installation and
contemporary forms of composition. Recent work includes Kingdom Come
(RSC), Opera for the Unknown Woman (Cardiff Millennium Centre,
Yorkshire International Festival and Platform Theatre, London); The
Narrow World (a film made in Tunisia with Gemma Riggs), Landscape II
(Dublin Fringe and U.K tour 2013-14); Autobiographer (Toynbee
Studios, London and UK tour - winner of Off Westend Award for Best
Sound Design); Iris Brunette (winner of Best Production award at
Dublin Fringe); every minute, always (Edinburgh 2010, with Abigail
Conway), Self Portrait with Frida (One on One Festival, BAC); The
View From Here (One on One Festival, BAC) and Simple Girl (UK and
international tour, Edinburgh Festival, Dublin Fringe).

Gemma
Riggs
(visual artist)

Gemma
is a London-based artist who works across video, photography,
installation and sound. Her work explores intensities of experience
and the dialogue between the profound and the mundane, the internal
and external.

Gemma’s
work has been shown internationally in exhibitions and festivals in
Latvia, Romania, Ireland, Luxembourg and Lithuania. She has received
multiple awards to produce original work from Arts Council England as
well as research and travel awards from the British Council. She has
a strong collaborative practice and has produced new works with with
choreographers and performers including Cosmin Manolescu, Melanie
Wilson and Laura Murphy.

Laura
Murphy
(choreographer)

Laura
Murphy works internationally as a choreographer, performer and
teacher. Her work includes large scale community dance and site
specific professional ensembles, video installations and live staged
works. Laura’s choreographic work has been shown in New York,
Canada, Sweden, Romania, Iceland, China, U.K; Latvia; and at
festivals such as the Biennale de Lyon, Reykjavik Dance Festival,
Edinburgh Fringe, Dublin Dance Festival and Cork Midsummer Festival.
Her recent works include Abacus; at Dublin Fringe and Yellow; at Cork
Midsummer Fest. She was awarded Best Movement Director by the Irish
Times Irish Theatre Awards 2017 for Whitby; at the Bram Stoker
festival.

Collaborators:

Jorina
von Zimmermann
(experimental psychologist)

Jorina
von Zimmermann has recently completed her PhD in Social Psychology at
University College London where she is now a Research Associate in
the department of Experimental Psychology. During her PhD, Jorina
studied how synchronous behaviour in groups of people increases
cohesion between them. In her research more generally, Jorina focuses
on group cohesion, how it emerges and which positive and negative
consequences it has for intragroup as well as intergroup relations.
Jorina strongly believes that science should be taken out of the lab
as often as possible and it is one of her aims to apply (her)
research findings to real-world scenarios.

Susan
Ryland:
(artist and activist)

Susan
Ryland is a practicing artist, researcher, lecturer and political
activist. She creates site and event specific multimedia artworks
that explore the interaction between text and visual language. Her
research interest draws on cognitive linguistics to show how an
understanding of thought mechanisms such as metaphor, metonymy and
synecdoche enable us to interpret meaning both ‘held within’, and
‘created by’ processes, materials, objects, language and context
in artworks. Susan lectures in Creativity and Cognition within Higher
Education. She is a Green Party activist seeking common ground across
the ‘progressive’ political spectrum to achieve a more equal,
sustainable and democratic society.

Mary
Paterson
(writer / curator)

Mary
Paterson is a writer and curator who works between performance,
poetry and visual art. Based in London, she collaborates with artists
around the world to explore the materiality of language as, from and
about art. Recent commissions include Taking Writing for a Walk; for
Live Art DK (Copenhagen, 2014), A Travelling Lighthouse; for Wellcome
Collection (London, 2015) and Aftermath; for Fabrica and TAP
(Brighton and international, 2015). Mary was (2017) Bristol Art
Writer in Residence for the Art Writers Group, working with Spike
Island and Arnolfini on a new installation that explores the
histories of immigration. Mary regularly writes about art, academia
and audiences; she was recently guest editor of a special edition of
the peer-reviewed journal Theatre, Dance and Performance Training
(Taylor and Francis, 2016), and her chapter It Moves; will be
published in The Creative Critic (Routledge) later this year.

For
more information about You Move Me visit www.youmoveme.com

For
more information on the project and NN visit
www.NNContemporaryArt.org

Ends

Notes
to editors:

NN
is a contemporary art space in the centre of Northampton, United
Kingdom.

A
publication will accompany the exhibition.

Check
for updates: www.NNContemporaryArt.org

The
artists are grateful for the support given from the following
organisations and their people:

Gabriela
Tudor Foundation (Romania)

Žagarė
Fringe Festival (Lithuania)

Arts
Council England (UK)

Thanks
also to Ugnius Stenianskis, Jeremy Nicholls, Matthew De Pulford,
Catherine Herbert, Esther Collins, Dimity Nicholls, Cosmin Manolescu
and Stefania Ferchedau.

Opening
hours:

Wednesday–Saturday
11am–6pm

NN
is supported by:

Arts
Council England

Northampton
Borough Council

Northampton
County Council

The
University of Northampton

Northampton
Community Foundation

Compton
Fund for Arts, Culture and Heritage

NN
Contemporary Art is joining the Arts Council England National
Portfolio from 2018.

For
further information please contact:

Danielle
Macleod