Art / art exhibition
Sophia Al-Maria and Lydia Orahmane present collaborative exhibition at Spike Island
Showing collaborative work made over a two-year period, the artists Sophia Al-Maria and Lydia Ourahmane will be leading Spike Island’s autumn exhibition programme with Grey Unpleasant Land.
Both artists are migrants to the UK, and have been witness to a cultural and historical landscape in England that has often unsettled them, from themes of ownership and class to inheritance and belonging.
Through this body of work, their aim is to interrogate the cultural and social narratives at play within England, offering an artistic lens through which to explore national identity and legacy: digging deep into the “grey areas” of “the myth of England as a nation”.
is needed now More than ever
Lionheart (2016-2024), A heraldic, hand-painted lion by Sophia Al-Maria and Lydia Ourahmane, from Grey Unpleasant Land, Spike Island – photo: courtesy the artists
The pieces shown include the diptych Job Lot (late 1700s/2024) and Silver Service (1774/2024), presenting the possessions passed down through two very contrasting English families: 240 chamber pots once used to adorn a pub ceiling, and a priceless collection of 250-year-old George III silverware.
Fly Tip (2024) shows a number of scavenged articles illegally dumped in Bristol and the surrounding areas; meanwhile the red velvet of Curtain (2024), recovered from a Belgravia skip outside a mews house clearance in 2020, offers an analogy for “the moral decay of England’s ruling classes”.
Elsewhere in the exhibition, Birthright (2024) is a >one-tonne pallet of Scottish sandstone wrought from the ancient and historically significant symbol of Scottish and English monarchy – the Stone of Scone – “questioning the legitimacy of those who are born to rule”.
Sophia Al-Maria and Lydia Orahmane: Grey Unpleasant Land is at Spike Island until January 19 2025, open Wednesday to Sunday 12-5pm. For more information visit www.spikeisland.org.uk.
All photos: Courtesy of Sophia Al-Maria and Lydia Orahmane
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