Selfridges have partnered with Fierce to host an in store programme as part of the Healing Gardens of Bab. Customers are invited to join and explore a variety of exhibitions, workshops, DJs and live performances throughout July and it’s all totally free.

EXHIBITING ARTISTS
Girth of Venus, Club Até, Sunil Gupta & Charan Singh, Rosanna Raymond & Sione Monu

DJ LINEUP
Lady Shaka, Lagoon Femshayma, Shivum Sharma
Club Bandit, DJ Betti Forde, Island:T, Just Soriah, LMGM, Mystic Meg, Q Sermon, Romo Weeks, Sexy Roy

Performances include Sydney’s Justin Shoulder, the For the Culture Collective and more to be announced.

Workshops are free to attend and can be booked here.

Workshop Schedule

Saturday 2 July 14:00 – 15:30 & 16:00 – 17:30

Queer Botanical Drawing

Queer Botany and local illustrator EL Thrush have teamed up to host illustration workshops around plants and art. The session will work with real plant samples exploring the media of ink and pen. ​

Based more in the meditative and expressive quality of drawing rather than a scientific approach, we will warm up with some brief exercises to get familiar with the media, followed by a couple of longer drawing exercises. We will also discuss scientific and cultural correlations between queerness and plants. ​

All skill levels are welcome. All materials will be provided (although you are welcome to bring your own) along with plants that you can take home. This will be a space space to play, observe and learn. ​Expect flowery language, gender (and paint) fluidity, and a queered appreciation of the natural world around us.

Sunday 3 July 13:00 – 14:30 & 15:30 & 17:00

Queering Culture: Fermenting Futures with Kirsty Clarke

Fermentation is a vital and contaminating process by which shapeshifting microorganisms transform fresh ingredients into radically new cultured funks of deliciousness. ​Join artist Kirsty Clarke for a short introductory workshop in the art of fermentation amongst the Healing Gardens of Bab at Selfridges. You will create your own pickle while learning fermentation’s imperfect, do-it-yourself ethos. Empowering you to experiment with your own fabulous ferments at home. ​

Saturday 9 July 14:00 – 15:30 & 16:00 – 17:30

Botanical Beat Make Up Tutorial with Drag Queen Artist Lilith

This makeup workshop, facilitated by acclaimed Birmingham Drag Artist and Makeup whizz Lilith and collaborating MUA Wez Watson is for all ages and skill levels. Sometimes makeup can be an environment where people can feel intimidated so we want to create a welcoming space for people to play and join in. ​Join Lilith in creating floral looks incorporating real leaves and flowers into our makeup processes. Lilith will also look at a number of application techniques such as colour packing, stamping and blending.

Sunday 10 July 13:00 – 14:30 & 15:30 – 17:00

Kahoa Tongan Garland Workshop with Sione Monu

Join this very special workshop with Auckland based artist Sione Monu.​Sione’s art practice works with nimamea’a tuikakala; or the Tongan fine art of flower designing using the form of kahoa or Tongan garland. Weaving connections between place, people and the different environments in which he works, Monu’s practice brings aspects of the spiritual and ecological contexts of art-making in Tonga and Tāmaki Makaurau together.​In this workshop we’ll use a collection of flowers, found plant materials and adhesive paper to create our own garlands.​

This workshop is suitable for all skill levels and all materials will be provided.

Saturday 16 July 14:00 – 15:00 & 16:00 – 17:00

VOGUE for beginners hosted by Eric Scutaro

Eric Scutaro, is a Venezuelan choreographer, dance performer and Queer activist, based in Birmingham. His choreographies, workshops and performances explore hip-hop, Waacking and the Voguing style as a way to advocate for LGBTQIA+ community. His work has also stood out for doing Queer activism within the hip-hop culture in his country.​

This beginners workshop will teach you the basics of Vogue: spin, dip, pose and more in a welcoming and inclusive environment.

Sunday 17 July 13:00 – 14:30 & 15:30 – 17:00

Queering Culture: Fermenting Futures with Kirsty Clarke

Fermentation is a vital and contaminating process by which shapeshifting microorganisms transform fresh ingredients into radically new cultured funks of deliciousness. ​Join artist Kirsty Clarke for a short introductory workshop in the art of fermentation amongst the Healing Gardens of Bab at Selfridges. You will create your own pickle while learning fermentation’s imperfect, do-it-yourself ethos. Empowering you to experiment with your own fabulous ferments at home. ​

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to undo, redo, represent, reimagine, activate, and upcycle the archive. For my purposes, I’m not interested in the archive as a repository of inert objects or presentation of historical documents; I am interested in how the archive can be performed and transformed — how it can bend and defy linear time, how it can be in conversation with the past, present and also speak to the future. – Jess Dobkin

Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective, curated by Emelie Chhangur and presented at the Art Gallery of York University (September 2021), repurposed Dobkin’s 25+ year performance art archive into a vital and pertinent engagement with a living audience. The Wetrospective celebrates the “We” of collectivity, collaboration and community and the “Wet” of slippery, messy life playfully subverting and upending conventions of the gallery, institution and exhibition practices. It’s an intimate encounter that reflects and refracts trauma, ritual, healing, memory and the necessarily untidy overlaps, intersections, collisions and frictions. The Wetrospective asks: How do archives
perform?

In this archival reading room laboratory, visitors can finger through Jess’ fonds. The space is mediated by a Digital Finding Guide with AR (augmented reality) features where you can SEARCH, SIFT, SPACE and SPREAD and a Wetrospective Major Arcana deck of cards.

It’s an invitation and an offering. You’re Welcome.

The Wetrospective Reading Room will be open at the following times:
Friday 1st July, 3-5pm
Saturday 2nd July, 12-4pm
Sunday 3rd July, 12-4pm

Jess Dobkin

Jess Dobkin is an internationally acclaimed artist. Her performance and curatorial projects are presented at museums, galleries, theatres, universities and in public spaces internationally. She was active in the downtown performance art scene in New York City before moving to Toronto in 2002. Recent projects include her 2017 Dora-nominated performance, The Magic Hour, which was developed through The Theatre Centre Residency program with support from the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council. She created The Artist-Run Newsstand (2015-2016), a one-year artist-run newsstand that operated in a vacant subway station newsstand kiosk. Her Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar (2006, 2012, 2016) continues to receive significant scholarly consideration and media attention. She was Guest Curator of MONOMYTHS at FADO Performance Art Centre (2016-2017), Guest Curator of Harbourfront Centre’s HATCH performing arts residency program (2011-2012) and a co-curator of the 7a-11d International Festival of Performance Art (2009-2012.) She has taught as a Sessional Lecturer at OCAD University, the University of Toronto and Sheridan College, and was a Fellow at the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto. Her photographic images, created to accompany her performances, are also published and exhibited as stand-alone works. Her film and video works are distributed by Vtape.

Healing Gardens of Bab

For just ten nights, after sunset, Chamberlain Square is briefly transformed by a colossal projected artwork inspired by Filipino folklore narratives by Club Até, a collective from Sydney.

Audiences are invited to encounter a large-scale installation, immersing themselves in the mythical Skyworld – a place of possibility and potential – experiencing how we can live in harmony with our environment. In Muva We Trust provides an opportunity for hopeful reflection at a moment in time where, collectively, we feel vulnerable and overwhelmed by both our recent compulsory social disconnect and the deepening climate crisis.

On the final night of In Muva We Trust, Club Muva rolls into town for a very special evening of vibrant pageantry at Symphony Hall – book your free tickets now.

In Muva We Trust is by Club Até and produced by Insite Arts

In Muva We Trust & Club Muva are presented as part of the UK/Australia Season 2021-22, a major programme of cultural exchange taking place across the two nations. Supported by Australia Council for the Arts and Australian Government RISE Fund and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Audio Descriptions

IN MUVA WE TRUST | PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
Click below to listen to Club Ate artists introduce the video artwork.
2 minutes.

IN MUVA WE TRUST | PART TWO: DESCRIPTION
Click below to listen to Club Ate artists describe the video artwork. Please wait until you hear the first sound cue, the sound of water cascading, to start the description in sync with the video.
6 minutes, 20 seconds.

Artist Biography

Club Até is an art collective based on the unceded lands of Sydney, led by interdisciplinary performance artists Justin Shoulder and Bhenji Ra.

They frequently collaborate with associate artists: Matthew Stegh, set and costume designer; Tristan Jalleh, digital video artist and music video director; and Corin Ileto, composer and electronic music producer, as well as their LGBQTIA+ artistic community.

Concerned with the dissection of cultural theory and identity, Club Até centralise their own personal histories and the narratives within their community, as tools to reframe performance. Their practice transverses sculpture; video; media; performance; and club events, with an emphasis on community nurture and activation. 

The work of Club Até is informed by the artists’ shared Filipino / Australian ancestry and the collective is invested in creating their own Future Folklore. They actively seek out collaborations with members of the queer Asia Pacific diaspora in Australia and the Philippines with the objective of finding collaborative meeting points, to celebrate voices of diversity.

Club Até have been invited and commissioned to perform and exhibit their works across Australia and internationally, in a diverse range of spaces and settings including festivals, independent and institutional galleries, theatres, nightclubs and outdoor environments. Their work has been presented at the Sydney Biennale Nirin 2020; Enlighten Festival 2020, National Gallery of Australia; Asialink Residency hosted by Green Papaya Arts, Philippines 2018; Balik Bayan, Blacktown Arts Centre, 2017; AsiaTOPA 2017 ACMI; M+ Museum in Hong Kong, Fault-lines: Disparate and Desperate Intimacies, ICA Singapore, 2016; 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Gallery of Modern Art Brisbane, 2015-16, Sydney MCA and Art Gallery of NSW.