• DUST BATHERS

    RAFAEL PÉREZ EVANS
  • Dust Bathers, a large-scale, site-specific installation by Rafael Pérez Evans

  • 23 FEB - 14 MAY 2023 ‘Dust Bathers’ borrows the collective and transgressive techniques of minority communities protesting for survival...

     

    23 FEB - 14 MAY 2023

     

    ‘Dust Bathers’ borrows the collective and transgressive techniques of minority communities protesting for survival and presents a poetic opportunity to asilvestrar – the artist’s Spanish translation for the English verb to re-wild – following the work of queer theorists, José Esteban Muñoz, Jack Halberstam and Tavia Nyong’o. A departure from urban and eco-bourgeois appropriations of the rural, ‘Dust Bathers’ will look to the robust histories and imaginative capacities of rural agricultural protest and queer dissent.

    Bridging two surplus communities and their respective sites of unrests – those of agricultural workers protesting on the streets, and the dancefloors of Queer nightlife – Pérez Evans presents a new experimental installation which embodies untamed, dirty gestures of resistance. By metaphorically draining the technicolour spectacle of the LGBTQ+ rainbow, Pérez Evans invites audiences to dust bathe in earthy tones as an exercise in imagining alternative horizons. Dust bathing is an animal behaviour characterised by rolling or moving around in dust, dry earth or sand, with the purpose of removing parasites, maintaining healthy skin or transmitting chemicals to mark territory.

  • Through industrial-sized PVC strip curtains - usually used to refrigerate large spaces in the industrial food industries, but also reminiscent of the entrance of now-closed East London gay bar, The Joiner’s Arms - visitors will enter into a dust covered gallery. Borrowing the machinery and language of agricultural workers' protests, a long conveyor belt connected to a large industrial blower lay dormant at the end of the room.

     

    Visitors are invited to leave their mark in the space through dance, drawing and/or dust bathing at their leisure.

    At 5pm each Saturday and Sunday, there will be an earthly ceremony. The machines will be turned on creating an ephemeral dust cloud, temporarily bathing the gallery and engulfing visitors in earthy tones. Visitors are encouraged to congregate at these times for a communal experience and collectively imagine alternative horizons.

     

    *The installation contains moving clay dust. Clothes and shoes can get dusty. Masks and goggles will be provided at the door if necessary. If you have allergies, sensitivities to clay or dust, asthma or any respiratory condition we kindly ask you to view the work from any of the various large windows and/or behind the PVC curtain.

     
     
  • EXHIBITION INSTALL SHOTS

  • ABOUT THE ARTIST Pérez Evans’s artworks play with the possibilities of agricultural and queer dissent, looking at ideas of surplus,...
    ABOUT THE ARTIST
     

    Pérez Evans’s artworks play with the possibilities of agricultural and queer dissent, looking at ideas of surplus, revenge and fragility. Repurposing readymades from agricultural and industrial origins, foodstuffs and untamed gestures taken from protests, he creates sites filled with weight, entropy and paradox.  Evans often collaborates with farmers to complicate on a monumental scale our understanding of a collapsing material world. His installations, sculptures and paintings poetically smudge, dump, park and spill materials that can refill emptiness with a rushed gravity. Many of the unstable materials he works with stand in for downgraded lands, voices and bodies which have been turned to surplus.

    Spanish-Welsh artist Rafael Pérez Evans (b. Málaga 1983) lives and works in London and Spain. He received an MFA and BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, and is currently reading for an Art Practice PhD at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, funded by the AHRC DTP Award. His work has been exhibited internationally with solo exhibitions including Insulin at No Show Space, UK (2022), Handful at The Henry Moore Institute, UK (2021), Pavo Realengo at Nogueras Blanchard Gallery, Barcelona (2017). Two-person & group exhibitions include Unpacking, Wheels at The Royal Academy, South London Gallery & Leeds Art Gallery, UK (2019- 2022), Pica at TEA Museum, Spain (2022) ; Thief, Invigilate at C3A Museum, Spain (2020) ; Salvation at Saatchi Gallery (2020) ; The Devil’s Bird – Ornithomancy at Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (2019) ; L’Dounne – Divination at Matadero, Madrid (2018) & Queima at Despina, Rio de Janeiro (2015).

  • Dust Bathers is supported by Spain Arts & Culture and The Embassy of Spain - London