New Order, Other Spaces

New Order, Other Spaces
Co-curated by Tiffany Boyle & Iliyana Nedkova, as part of Festival 2018

Kelvin Hall Ballroom, 1445 Argyle Street Glasgow G3 8AW.
Preview Thu 2 August 6-9pm.
Opening Hours: 2 - 12 August: Open daily 10am – 5pm.

Threshold Artspace, Perth Concert Hall and Perth Theatre, Mill Street, Perth PH1 5HZ.
Preview Saturday 4 August 2pm-4pm.
Opening Hours 2 August – 12 August: Mon – Sat 10am – 6pm; Sun 12noon – 6pm.
Opening Hours 13 August – 22 November: Open Mon – Sat 10am – 6pm, Closed Sun.

As part of Festival 2018 – the cultural programme accompanying the inaugural Glasgow 2018 European Championships – Horsecross Arts announces multi-site solo presentation New Order, Other Spaces by London-based artist Jo Longhurst. Co-curated by Tiffany Boyle and Iliyana Nedkova, the project explores the gymnastic body across photography, moving image and installation, presented simultaneously in Glasgow and Perth. New commissions produced in collaboration with gymnasts of all ages and responding to archival research take form in new moving image work, and responses to the life and work of dancer, choreographer and teacher Margaret Morris. New Order, Other Spaces engages with ideas of perfection, gender, gesture, and inter-generational understandings of movement. Performative interventions will be staged as part of both the Kelvin Hall and Threshold artspace opening previews; further details of the events programme will be announced here soon.

Jo Longhurst is internationally recognised for her explorations of cultural ideas of perfection through photography, video, performance and installation. She is drawn to human systems and structures, interested in attempts to create order from disorder, and the many ways in which we try to make sense of our place in the universe. She often returns to the question of how we as individuals learn to be in the world: how we are judged, shaped, or affected by our social and political environment, and how we are expected to ‘fit in’ or conform. Other Spaces (2008 – ongoing), a study of elite gymnasts in training and competition, explores what is required to produce a perfect performance, gently probing how ideas of perfection shape personal and national identities, as well as social and political systems. Jo Longhurst graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2008. Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions and events, including Arche Noah. Über Tier und Mensch in der Kunst, Museum Ostwall in Dortmund; Sport, Sport, Sport, Transmission, Glasgow, & BIMI, London; Other Spaces, Mostyn, Wales; The Worldly House, Documenta (13), Kassel; On Perfection: an Artists’ Symposium, Whitechapel Gallery, London; Photography in Britain since 2000, Krakow Photomonth; Becoming Animal, Becoming Human, Neue Gesellschaft fur Bildende Kunst/ New Society for Visual Arts, Berlin; New Works: Pavilion Commissions, National Media Museum, Bradford; New Contemporaries 2008, Liverpool Biennial; and The Refusal, Museum Folkwang, Essen. In 2012 she was awarded the Art Gallery of Ontario’s prestigious Grange Prize (now the AIMIA/ AGO Photography Prize). Longhurst lives and works in London.

Supported by Festival 2018, Glasgow Life, Glasgow School of Art, Scottish Gymnastics, The Zone Leotards, and Write-On Signs.