Mathew Wayne Parkin is a Radar visiting artist for the Summer term of 2024, pursuing their research into the physicality and performativity of sparring in sport, dialogue and interpersonal relationships, as well as accessibility and audio description in artist film. For their first visit, they will meet with Loughborough academics including Dr Eleanor Morgan, Professor Claire Warden and Dr Emma Pullen, as well as sharing their work with Fine Art students.

Radar is a partner on Parkin’s solo exhibition and new body of work currently on view at London’s Cubitt Gallery as part of the programme Feeling Still in a World Which Runs, curated by Sean Elder. Comprising moving-image and sculpture, I can fit a fist in my mouth engages with acts of withdrawal, censorship, violence and memorial within intimate relationships, with particular attention given to the ways that ethics and the interpersonal play out in relation to one another.

For a new video work, under the same title as the exhibition, they have invited a group of people, with whom they hold varying forms and degrees of intimacy, to audio-describe a series of vignettes, gestures, and brief moments: a laugh, a pause, a breath or reverb. These have been drawn from their personal archive of footage of family members, ex-partners, lovers, and friends.

Accompanying the moving image work are new sculptures including a love-seat made with readily-available materials, and exhibition barriers adorned with love locks that interact with and partition the gallery space. These accompany keyrings, locks, and other engagements distributed throughout the exhibition that collectively act as motifs of support, safety, confinement, and submission in differing contexts - and exist on a spectrum of which one end is care and the other is control.

Sound for the video was developed in dialogue with, and by sound designer Claude Nouk, several people known to the artist were invited to act as audio describers, and guidance on access and audio description was gratefully received by Mathew from Elaine Joseph (SoundScribe).

The exhibition is supported by Leeds Inspired, and Radar, Loughborough University, whilst part of this work was developed during a residency with SERF, Leeds.