What Time is Love? is an exhibition created by six artists from Peckham based collective Intoart responding to the domestic space of Flat Time House, the studio home of artist John Latham (1921– 2006). Incorporating textiles, furniture, book works, drawing, painting, sculptural garments and photography, the artworks in What Time is Love? speak in chorus about moments of connection and belonging.
This group exhibition has grown from time spent by the artists at Flat Time House over two years, with the house forming a space to reflect, talk about their practice and think collectively. The monumental scale and ambition of these works is politically charged, representing at once the energy and emotional intensity of the dancer whilst confronting the marginalisation of disabled people in the history of art.
The exhibition title, taken from the KLF’s 1988 electronic dance anthem What Time is Love? references a shared subject of exploration for the group: alternative histories of music and culture. Over the course of the artists’ extended research, they explored how self-identities are expressed through sound and are formed and evolve from different cultural backgrounds and sonic contexts. The works in conversation reveal deep connections and histories shared by the artists as part of Intoart, the community of which has developed into a scene in its own right over the past 25 years.
A collection of cassette tapes curated by the artists, and featuring contributors close to FTHo and Intoart, has grown over time as the exhibition developed. Cassettes are available to listen to in the gallery alongside the artworks, serving as an audio mapping of the cultural scenes feeding into the production of the works on display.
If you’d like to play a cassette tape, please let staff at the FTHo reception know and they can play it for you. Feel free to use Latham’s armchair and couch.
Cantilevered through the front of Flat Time House sits John Latham’s enormous sculpture of two books he named the Face. The pages of the books are interleaved so that they cannot be read in a rational manner rather signifying that knowledge should be communicated intuitively. This reflective and intuitive approach has been central to the experience of this group of artists during their time researching and working with the context of FTHo. In the first gallery, which Latham called The Mind, Andre Williams has responded to Latham’s work with a series of book sculptures using his graphic drawing style and striking typography in the first and final galleries. Radical Prototypes is presented here on a shelf designed by the artist in the same colours as Latham’s sculpture.
Featuring her kaleidoscopic drawings, Ntiense Eno-Amooquaye’s sculptural garments reimagine historic costume and avant-garde couture. For this exhibition we see the immaculately tailored garment mounted alongside a striking series of photographic self-portraits of the artist wearing the piece. These images, which evoke studio fashion photography, present the artist embodying an act of self-transformation. Providing a soundtrack to the space we hear a mixtape selected by the artist as background music for her photoshoot. Eno-Amooquaye has collaborated with FTHo since 2019,
spending time researching Latham’s writing which she has responded to with poetry. Eno-Amooquaye is reciting her writing in a performance event taking place in the gallery on 16 October.
Alongside Eno-Amooquaye’s presentation, Dawn Wilson’s compositions of reggae sound systems in London, Birmingham and Kingston, Jamaica are drawn from black and white photographs documenting the historical significance of this cultural movement. Wilson captures a moment in time when two legends from the Jamaican music scene visited the UK in the mid 1980s, Bunny Wailer in London and Youthman Promotion Sound System in Birmingham. These deeply personal musical influences on her work demonstrate how music and the scenes that emerge from them derive form and can help shape personal identity and understanding. Examples can be listened to via her personal selection of cassettes included in the show.
In her paintings of disabled dancers, Nancy Clayton reaches beyond the present moment to depict what it might look like to ‘Live in a New World’ where the ambitions of disabled people are nurtured. As a dancer herself, an artform intricately linked with music and sound, she intends to capture the emotional intensity of performance through figurative composition, here using natural dyes on silk and cotton.
In the corridor and in the living area that Latham called The Body Event are works by Nick Fenn. His detailed series of site-specific drawings transcribe the sights and sounds of the post-industrial landscape of coastal North Yorkshire. The Blur series of pastel drawings capture photographic artifacts and effects from landscape images, zoomed in to abstraction. Redcar is Crawling with Sound depicts a landscape from a train window in passing. Fenn envisioned the view as a score in real time, similar to a spectrogram, which he used for a multi-layered sonic composition. Alongside, a hand-woven hanging echoes geological strata, considering the earth itself as a score emerging over epochs. The piece sits alongside One State One by John Latham, the two artists sharing an understanding of the landscape as representation of time. Latham’s original armchair can be used to listen to the sound piece, which sits in the space with Andre Williams’ Eye Cushion.
The rear gallery, The Hand was originally Latham’s studio and for this exhibition has been transformed into a domestic living space with a sound system reusing Latham’s original Hi-Fi speakers. Alongside, Christian Ovonlen’s work re-animates euphoric memories of dancing at home to the ‘KLF’ on MTV in the early 1990s. New works on paper depicting the KLF and Soul II Soul employing Ovonlen’s distinctive use of colour, explore and summon memories of music from his youth, which can be played in the space via cassette tape. Large textiles situated in front of the conservatory bring to mind Latham’s habit of using paintings on canvas as window blinds. Ovonlen uses them to transform the space, his drawn and painted gestural mark making on this scale is intended to convey the transcendent experience of listening to music and movement in space.
Latham’s old couch has been reupholstered by Andre Williams with three cushion pieces as a place to sit, reflect and listen to music. The artist selected Latham’s Moon photoboard to be mounted above the couch, the work is intended to remind us of the distant view, symbolic of reflective distance. Williams has included his sculpture Blues Bookshelf to support some of Latham’s personal collection of books with new covers designed by the artist. In addition Williams also selected six book sculptures by Latham to be presented on the original bookcase. The works, from the NOIT Intercourse series, feature interleaved books like the Face sculpture on the façade of FTHo.
