To their fixed station, all in bright array is a public rehearsal of a performance for hands through the portals of the Bermondsey Bothy in Southwark Park Galleries’ garden. During her residency in the bothy throughout 2023, Kelly Large investigated the Anchorite tradition: a mediaeval way of life in which individuals, mostly women known as Anchoresses, chose a form of solitary confinement that was both hermetic and gregarious.

Anchoresses lived in cells with small windows attached to community buildings called anchorholds, not dissimilar to the architecture and function of the Bermondsey Bothy. In their role as charismatic religious recluses and community advisors, Anchoresses were thought to ‘anchor’ the town where they were situated. However, some were wild thinkers – proto-activists, artists and writers that queered the social codes of Mediaeval society and used their anchorhold as a safe space from which to discreetly distribute divergent ways of thinking.

During her residency, Kelly gathered an archive of over 200 conventional and unorthodox hand gestures from diverse sources. With a group of creative allies, the archive has collectively been used to playfully develop their own wayward gestures for an imagined modern day anchoress, performed through the windows of the bothy as an unruly peepshow for hands.

Credits

Creative Allies: Lucy Clout, Charlotte Ginsberg, Frances Scott and Amanprit Sandhu
Dramaturgical and movement support: Sara Sassanelli
Special thanks: Ruth Claxton, Nicholas Evans

The research underpinning this project has been supported through a residency with Southwark Park Galleries, a bursary from a-n The Artists Information Company, a Hospitalfield Interdisciplinary Residency and an Arts Council England – Develop Your Creative Practice grant.

Biography

Kelly is an artist, organiser and educator. Her practice is research led, resulting in live, interdisciplinary artworks that engage performance and social choreography to critically explore individual and collective agency. Fascinated by the human and beyond-human systems that shape our beliefs, values and behaviours, she works collaboratively to produce prompts, props and actions which examine how these organising forces affect us, manifested across multiple formats including live events, exhibitions, broadcasts, books, videos and workshops.

Her work has been commissioned by Tate Modern, Venice Biennale, Liverpool Biennial and The Bluecoat, Liverpool. Recent commissions and residencies include Southwark Park Galleries (2023), Hospitalfield (2022), Skelf Projects (2022), MIMA (2020) and Eastside Projects (2018). Kelly is Course Leader, Diploma in Professional Studies: BA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts. Previous to this she was Tutor, MA Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art and has worked within curatorial, education and public programmes at Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and New Art Gallery Walsall as well as directing SUNDAY, an international art fair for young commercial galleries, held in London