Radar hosts Sheila Ghelani and Sue Palmer in Loughborough as they develop their new work Atmospheric Forces. Staged as a performance taking place around a table, the work will incorporate objects, sound, film and spoken text. Atmospheric Forces is about the relationships between the forces that shape our lives, and the times we live in, such as minerals, air, colonialism, and human-nature relationships. 

Ghelani and Palmer previously collaborated on Common Salt, a show and tell work about empire, nature and memory, and this new work builds on their practice and performance work. Their collaborative work is shaped through research, conversations and exchanges with people and materials. This new work is being developed through a series of week-long residencies in four locations: Wimbledon College of Arts UAL, Somerset Earth Sciences Centre, University of Reading’s Department of Film, Theatre & Television in partnership with South Street Arts and Radar, Loughborough University. These residencies build on the initial research and development of Atmospheric Forces that began in 2020 with the University of Reading and South Street Arts.  

The resulting performance work will be staged in Loughborough amongst other touring venues.  

The project is supported by Arts Council England.

Whilst in residence with Radar in July 2024, the artists are keen to engage with researchers, staff and students who are interested in (or specialist in) the themes of the project. Opportunities to engage with Ghelani and Palmer will be shared through our Radar channels soon!  

 

About the Artists

Sheila Ghelani and Sue Palmer both work individually as artists whose work spans performance, audio and moving image. Each artist’s practice centres on using research to make artistic work with detail and resonance, for public places, made for the passerby or the guest, with the artists often making new work with and for people. Sheila and Sue first collaborated as part of Sheila’s Rambles with Nature project, developing an experimental collaboration evidencing the history of forgetting, bringing their strengths and interests together through language and object, music and lyric, political and social geography. Both artists work collaboratively with institutions, places and people. Their collaborative work Common Salt has been shown around the UK including the Wellcome Collection, Queen’s House RMG, Museum of London Docklands, Manchester Library, Glasgow Hunterian and Somerset Libraries, supported by Arts Council England. Their book Common Salt with contributing writers including Alan Read, Deepa Bhasthi and Alice Proctor, was published in partnership with the Live Art Development Agency in 2021.  

Sheila Ghelani is an artist of Indian/English mixed heritage, whose solo and collaborative performances, social art works, installations, texts and videos seek to illuminate and make visible the connections between identity, ecology, science, history and the present day. Since 1995 her attentive, detailed and care ‘full’ practice has been cross-pollinating ideas, materials, people and places in order to un-settle dominant narratives and make space for those that are (or that which is) in-between, on the edge, in the middle, at the border. www.sheilaghelani.co.uk  

Sue Palmer is a collaborative artist working across media and form, with a focus on live performance, making things with people, places and nature in the UK and internationally. Sue was an Associate Lecturer in Performance at Dartington College of Arts. Commissions include the collaborative work The 100 Year Old Band in Finland alongside work for Battersea Arts Centre, b-side and many non-arts organisations including Somerset Wildlife Trust and the National Trust. Sue is also a project manager and producer, currently working on a National Lottery funded health and climate partnership in her home town of Frome. www.inquilines.com