Towner Celebration Day: Helen Cammock, The Long Note performance
Followed by a Panel Discussion with the artist
Saturday 27 May, 3:30pm
Free, drop-in
This event is part of Towner 100 Celebration on Saturday 27 May 2023. From 10.00am to 10.00pm join us to celebrate Towner’s 100th birthday! Throughout the day and into the evening, you’ll find workshops, performances, installations and DJs.
Performance
Join us for the inaugural performance of Towner’s recent acquisition of The Long Note by Helen Cammock. The work is based on the artist’s Turner Prize winning film, originally commissioned alongside the 50th anniversary of the first civil rights march in Derry, Northern Ireland, 1968. It explores the motivation for women’s participation in the civil rights movement, their invisibility in the historical narrative of time, and how it impacted on family life.
The performance by Cammock weaves together song and spoken word from activists, writers and songwriters, dealing with the fight for freedom. It considers what it means to choose and also to have no choice but to fight for freedom, and what this position might feel and sound like. The performance crosses geographies and time frames and includes texts and songs from Gaelic folk tunes and Nina Simone to Shakespeare.
Panel Discussion
Shortly after the performance there will be an opportunity to join us for an informal conversation between artist Helen Cammock, curator and Director of Performance Exchange Rose Lejeune, and Towner’s Head of Collections & Exhibitions Sara Cooper. Hear more about Towner’s acquisition of Cammock’s performance, and about our future plans and ambitions for the Collection.
The discussion will be relaxed, drop in and you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions.
About Helen Cammock
Helen Cammock was born in 1970 in Staffordshire. Cammock lives and works in Brighton and London. Film, photography, print, text, song and performance examine mainstream historical and contemporary narratives about Blackness, womanhood, oppression and resistance, wealth and power, poverty and vulnerability, throughout her practice. Her works often cut across time and geography, layering multiple voices as she investigates the cyclical nature of histories in her visual and aural assemblages.
In 2017, Cammock won the Max Mara Art Prize for Women and in 2019 was the joint recipient of The Turner Prize. She has exhibited and performed worldwide with recent solo shows including Bass Notes and SiteLines, Amant, Brooklyn, USA (2023), Helen Cammock: I Will Keep My Soul, Art + Practice, Los Angeles, USA (2023), They Call it Idlewild, Oakville Galleries, Ontario, Canada (2023), behind the eye is the promise of rain, Kestner Gesellshaft, Hannover, Germany (2022), Concrete Feathers and Porcelain Tacks, The Photographer’s Gallery, London, UK (2021), Beneath the Surface of Skin, STUK Art Centre, Leuven, Belgium (2021), Che Si Può Fare (What Can be Done), Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2019), Che Si Può Fare, Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy (2019) and The Long Note, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland (2019); VOID, Derry, Northern Ireland (2018). Group shows include Breathing, Hamburger Kunstalle, Hamburg, Germany (2022) and Radio Ballads, Serpentine Galleries, London, UK (2022).
About Rose Lejeune and Sara Cooper
Rose Lejeune is an experienced curator and consultant with particular expertise in working with artists whose practices have strong multi-disciplinary, performative, digital, public or social elements. Rose is the founder of Performance Exchange - a groundbreak dispersed live programme across commercial galleries in London which also works with a network of UK museums to acquire performance art. As one of its first museum partners, Towner Eastbourne acquired Helen Cammock’s performance The Long Note through Performance Exchange, with support from Art Fund.
Sara Cooper is Head of Collections and Exhibitions at Towner Eastbourne, where she is responsible for the exhibition programme and for the permanent collection, including overseeing acquisitions.
Accessibility
We have a budget available to make this event as accessible as possible – this can include interpretation services or other access needs we can meet to enable you to participate.
If you require access arrangements, please email programme@townereastbourne.org.uk two weeks before the event date so that we can book a service if needed.
About Studio 1
○ Flooring is concrete
○ The space is aroma-free
○ A gender-neutral, wheelchair-accessible bathroom can be found on the ground floor.
○ Comfortable space for service animals to rest can be found in the ground floor foyer; with watering facilities available in the nearby cafe.