Cher-ing is Caring is a new series of crits providing an open and informal space to share live work at any stage of development. Each Cher will facilitate the presentation of live works across mediums, offer opportunities to receive feedback from peers, and create opportunities to connect to artists working in live formats across the UK. Cher-ing is Caring is organised by artist and A/WA member Nick Harris. If you would like to Cher work at a future session please get in touch.
6th July 2021
The second session of ‘Cher-ing is Caring’ invites contributions from artists Samra Mayanja and Rizzla La Fizz. Each artist will present work, followed by an informal opportunity to discuss and feedback on the presentations.
This session is free to attend and will be held on Zoom. Please register by emailing info (at) artworkassociation.org. Registered attendees will receive the link 10 minutes in advance of the discussion.
Nick Harris is a multidisciplinary artist, producer, musician and composer. His performance, photographic, live and curatorial work investigates collective community practices, highlighting the role social behaviours play in shaping our sense of identity. He ran away with Zippo’s circus in 2016, undertaking rigorous physical training to become a clown. In 2016, after leaving the circus, he co-founded the peripatetic cabaret event performanceClub with Marius Hermansen, which he produced and curated until 2019.
Harris has performed at galleries and events nationally, including: The Horse Hospital, The Glory, Cell Project Space, Raven Row, London; Supernormal Festival, Oxford; and The Royal Standard, Liverpool. Throughout 2016 – 2018, he engaged extensively in rehabilitative performance work within European Refugee Camps. In 2020, he started broadcasting a monthly radio show, isoTank, on Montez Press Radio to an international audience. He can often be found behind a piano in London venues, performing his own compositions accompanied by his long-time collaborator, the leading cabaret artist Ms Sharon Le Grande.
Rizzla La Fizz is a drag artist living and studying in London, hailed from Hastings, a grubby little seaside town in the South. In their performances, they try to recreate the seedy charm of the seaside town, and the sexuality, vulgarity and fishy euphoria that can come out of it. In their most recent performance they explore gender identities and sexuality through the story of a one night stand with a Jelly Fish. They are currently studying at the Slade School of Fine Art.
Samra Mayanja is an artist and writer based in Leeds who’s central concern is what moves us and what it is to be moved. Her work spans writing, performance and film and is an effort to commune disparate voices and to generate around and beyond what’s inconceivable, lost or arrives in tatters.
1st June 2021
The first session of ‘Cher-ing is Caring’ invites contributions from live artists Albert Smith, Francisco Zhan, Samiir Saunders and Yuki Nishimura. Each artist will present work, followed by an informal opportunity to discuss and feedback on the presentations.
Albert Smith is a Birmingham based comedian, live art performer a storyteller, raconteur and a baker. Albert has performed at festivals and galleries nationally, including Shout Festival Birmingham, Raven Row Gallery London, Johannesburg International Arts Festival and performed with FrankoB. He is known for using the bread baking process to tell autobiographical stories and is currently exploring boxer shorts as an area of research.
Francisco Zhan (b. Portugal, works London) is a visual artist working predominantly with ceramics, drawing and writing. Francisco draws from the traditions of painted sculpture to revise queer affects in Western histories, in a practise of self-ethnography. Sources of inspiration include coloured ancient Greek and Roman sculpture, gay saunas / Roman bathhouses, tomb art, decorative arts, drag, Shanzhai fashion, snails’ reproductive system, mimesis in nature and gay teachers.
@francisco.zhan franciscozhan.com
Samiir Saunders (b. 1996, Birmingham — he/they) is a queer, Black, mixed media poet based in Birmingham, UK. Their work consists of digital poetry, page poetry, spoken word performance, experimental hip-hop, video-poetry, and poetry films. Samiir’s work has featured at galleries, festivals, and online spaces, including: The Joyous Thing II, SHOUT Festival, Fat Out Fest, no barking aRt Gallery, Channel 4 Random Acts, Eastside Projects, flat 8 Gallery, Supernormal Festival, Artefact Gallery, and Birmingham Open Media.
Yuki Nishimura is a Berlin-based artist and researcher working across poetry and performance, continually exploring animistic ways of processing neoliberal moments and otherness through modern-day shamanic practice. Polyfilling cracks where time is out of joint in haunted events, Yuki’s storytelling serves to fill historical gaps for others in collective narratives. @nomorejumpingoff_notjumpingoff