Join us in June for Seeing Art with the Whole Body, a new workshop series by Claire Loussouarn.we will explore how to listen and receive an artist’s artwork and world with the three-dimensionality of our sensory bodies, moving away from an ocular-centred understanding of engaging with art. We will ask: how can we engage the whole range of our sensory machine when we come into contact with artwork and therefore reclaim the full ability of our bodies to feel and express themselves in response to artwork?
Claire Loussouarn is a movement artist and somatic wizard. She’ll bring some of her magic to make you look at artwork from a fresh and new perspective. You will be invited to follow simple movement scores to attune to your senses, change your perspective through space and challenge our normal default position of focused forward vision. You will learn to trust your body and its subtle felt sense in response to artwork letting go of preconceptions about how you should conduct yourself in an art gallery. What more can we learn about art and an artist’s artwork when we’re engaging our full sensory bodies and its ability to shape and express through space rather than just trying to understand with our minds?
For our first workshop in this series at IMT gallery we will have the pleasure to dialogue with Fran Hayes’ artwork. Her exhibition Thick, Stretchy, Sticky Space features digital paintings and video works that delve into speculative landscapes, inspired by damaged ecologies, science-fiction, and the uncanny; all viewed through a profoundly human lens. Stumbling into technotime you are confronted by amorphous energies, they are whispering sweet nothings – forgotten melodies, dark truths, hidden narratives – digital paintings spill from screens, illuminating elastic futures. As well as exploring how to receive and enter Fran’s artwork through different doorways in movement through space, our senses and the shapes of our movement, we will also explore how our bodies imagine existing within the speculative landscapes she offers.
