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BLISS, Regression

 

8 October – 29 October 2016

PV: Friday 7 October 2016 4-8pm, with film screening at 5pm

 

 

 

 

BLISS (Lucy Stein & Simon Bayliss) laid themselves under the powers of hypnotist Robin Smidowicz within two ancient fogous in West Cornwall.  What happened in these prehistoric subterranean enclosures cannot be fully understood, much less their stories told. Regression is the best account we have.

 

Lucy chose to go down into Boleigh fogou near St Buryan for its enchanted aura. Simon chose Pendeen fogou, piqued as it is with antiquarian notoriety as well as an unrelenting stench of slurry.

 

Within the radon-filled granite chambers of these mysterious Iron Age structures, the artists ventured hypnotically through intense past-life experiences.  Visions and sensations were roused from the subconscious; Stein recognises herself as a bearded Roman warrior; Bayliss a tired Victorian lady. Boundaries of gender, race and class are traversed, and, as hypnosis deepened the artists gained visual insights into what happens beyond death. 

 

Each October, Kingsgate Project Space will invite an artist group or an artist-led organisation from outside of London to take over our exhibition and event programme.  REGRESSION by BLISS is the first such project.

 

 

 

SPECIAL EVENT...

 

Lucy Stein and Simon Bayliss met on the West Coast of Ireland. Their first collaboration was SS Blue Jacket, a multi-generational group exhibition at KARST, Plymouth (2013). Since then they have worked together on many curatorial ventures including The White Hotel at Gimpel Fils, London (2014). Earlier this year, they began working together as BLISS, showing collaborative sculpture in Uncommon Chemistry at Observer Bld, Hastings. Together they also host and produce the monthly radio show Squirming the Worm on NTS and are currently working towards Samhain – a Halloween music event at CAST, in Helston Cornwall. Stein and Bayliss also work independently as artists and live in St Just and St Ives, Cornwall.

 

Camera: Leon Bayliss

 

 

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