13:00 – 15:45
Act I: If LOVE Could Touch
‘Automatic Poetry’ Workshop with Gem Bryant
Gem Bryant will lead a participatory workshop exploring automatic writing as a method for generating visual poetry. Through guided prompts and reflective exercises, participants will produce fragments of text drawn from memory, intuition, and spontaneous thought. These materials become the starting point for creating visual poems using simple drawing and mark-making tools.
Encouraging the ethos of ‘write first, edit later,’ the workshop invites participants to experiment with the relationship between language, image, and gesture. Moving between individual reflection and collective exchange, the session creates a shared space where words, marks, and memories take shape as personal visual compositions. No prior writing or artistic experience is required.
This event is free and open to all, however advanced booking is required for the workshop and recommended for the evening events.
This programme is deeply rooted in audience engagement and participation, but this is always invitational, there is no pressure to perform or speak.
If LOVE had Senses… is curated by Nishi Chodimella, Norah Tsai and Reaia Parkes in partnership with Mimosa House and Goldsmiths MFA Curating for the exhibition A Formula for How to Find Love by artist Victoria Cantons.
Gem Bryant (They/Them)
Gem Bryant is a multidisciplinary artist and facilitator from Essex, based in London. They are a graduate of Fine Art: Photography at Camberwell College of Arts (2023) and an alumni of the Associate Studio Program (2023-5).
Toying with meaning and using memory as material, Bryant confronts and explores the ways we are moulded by our beliefs and the way we assign meaning in our lives- through writing, drawing, sculpture and installation.
Writing is the oil in the engine of Bryant’s practice, and a tool they use to encounter themselves again and again. Working intuitively onto rough paper scrolls, the gestural marks dance between drawing and writing. These intimate, anecdotal musings are sometimes later contained in sculptures and installations, expanding on ideas of love, grief, longing and loss.
At the heart of this introspective work is Gem’s waxing and waning relationship to/with faith itself, which has at times been turbulent as they have confronted their Catholic upbringing. Rather than attempting to resolve, Bryant’s practice forms an altar of sorts, allowing room to question, love, dream and ruminate.