This multidisciplinary arts workshop will explore strategies revolving around inhibition, control, coherence and disorder, culminating in the devising of a performance. Expect elements of performance, installation, sculpture and visual arts.

Tai Shani 's practice encompasses performance, film, photography and sculptural installations, frequently structured around experimental texts. Taking inspiration from disparate histories, narratives and characters mined from forgotten sources, Shani creates dark, fantastical worlds, brimming with utopian potential. These deeply affective works often combine rich and complex monologues with arresting, saturated installations, manifesting equally disturbing and divine images in the mind of the viewer. Last year, Tai's work "DC: SEMIRAMIS" commissioned by Glasgow International and The Tetley (Leeds, UK) and her participation in "Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender, Resistance", was nominated for the Turner Prize. She won, along with Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Lawrence Abu Hamdan, after jointly requesting from the jury that all four artists win "in the name of commonality, multiplicity and solidarity".

Recent exhibitions and commissions include work at Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (2016); RADAR commission, Loughborough University, (2016), Serpentine Galleries (2016); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2015); Southbank Centre, London (2014-15); Arnolfini, Bristol (2013); Matt’s Gallery, London (2012) and FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais and Loop Festival, Barcelona (2011); The Barbican, London (2011); and ICA, London (2011).

Florence Peake is a London-based artist who has been making work since 1995. She makes solo and group performance works intertwined with an extensive visual art practice. Presenting work internationally and across the UK in galleries, theatres and outdoors, she is known for an approach which is at once sensual and witty, expressive and rigorous, political and intimate. Her performance practice uses drawing, painting and sculpture combined with found and fabricated objects placed in relation to the moving body. Her work explores notions of materiality and physicality; the body as site and vehicle of protest, and political concerns around freedom, the anthropocene and the commodification of art. By encouraging chaotic relationships between the body and material, she creates radical and outlandish performances, creating temporary alliances and micro-communities within the audience. Following on from performances she often creates sculpture and painting; these artworks serve as documentation but also as ways of processing the experience of the performance itself, relationships with dancers, audiences and sites.

Florence's work has been presented at CRAC Occitanie, Sète, France (2018), MDT Stockholm, Sweden (2018), London Contemporary Music Festival, UK (2018), Bosse & Baum, London, UK (2019); De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, UK (2018); Palais De Tokyo, Paris, France (2018); Hayward Gallery, London UK (2018), Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, UK (2017), Studio Leigh, London UK (2017); Sara Zanin Gallery, Rome, Italy (2017); Serpentine, London UK (2016); Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2016); ICA, London (2016); Modern Art Oxford (2016); BALTIC, Newcastle UK (2013), Frieze, London UK (2013), Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2012), and Venice Biennale 2019. As a performer, Florence has worked with filmmakers, artists and choreographers including Joe Moran, Gaby Agis, Tai Shani, Jonathan Baldock, Serena Korda, Nicola Conibere, Gary Stevens, Station House Opera and Theatre of Mistakes.



WHERE AND WHEN?

The course takes place at our residential centre in Aulus les Bains. It's two hours south of Toulouse, high in the French Pyrenees, very near the border with Spain. For detailed travel information, see the transport section. The course starts on Wednesday, . We advise that you arrive the evening before (26/07/2022) - dinner and accommodation that night is included. The course runs for five days, ending on Sunday night. Accommodation on Sunday night is included, then we leave on Monday morning (01/08/2022). If you decide to take the minibus with us, you will be picked up in Toulouse at 6pm on 26/07/2022, and will be back in Toulouse at 11am on 01/08/2022.

HOW TO BOOK

To book your place on the course, click the button in the green section above. You won't pay anything right now - we'll send you a booking confirmation email with everything you need to know next. Your place is reserved without payment for three days.

You'll find a payment link in the booking confirmation email - follow the link to make a payment (either in full, or the first payment of a 6 month payment plan). In the latter case, a monthly payment plan will be put in place, so your card will be charged 1/6 of the fee today, and 1/6 each month (on the same day) for an additional 5 months. All card payments are handled by Stripe, and are extremely secure. We don't store any card data ourselves - all of this is handled securely off-site by Stripe. If you have a discount or grant code, you will be able to add it when you follow the payment link in your confirmation email.

Once you've made a payment, you'll receive another email containing your receipt, links to resources, contact information and access to our group chat to discuss the workshop with other participants.