Open All Hours
Shape Arts Open 2014, hybrid Exhibition
In January 2024 I exhibited in the hybrid group show Open All Hours, the 2024 Shape Open exhibition. Which explored "the pressurised relationship we have with time, productivity, and the pace of our modern, increasingly digital, society." I exhibited a film piece I made in 2021 'Lo-fi Sick Woman Odyssey' with music by Oscar Vinter.
Open All Hours
9th - 21st January 2024
198 Contemporary Arts and Learning, 198 Railton Road, London, SE24 0JT
Online exhibition: https://openallhours.online/​
Creative team:
Jeff Rowlings - Head of Programme, Shape Arts
Elinor Hayes - Creative Producer, Shape Arts
Emily Roderick - Assistant Producer, Shape Arts
April Lin 林森 - Shape Open alumnus and selection panellist ​
With work from…
Mike Bamgbala, Eskild Beck, Uma Breakdown, Emmy Clarke, Fatma Durmush, Yasmeen Fathima Thantrey, Charlie Fitz, Paul Fletcher, Lan Florence Yee, Yarden Fudim, Carole Lee, Oliver McConnie, Tracey Payne, Jamila Prowse, Simon Raven, Samiir Saunders, Josie Rae Turnbull and Diana Zrnic.
​​"The idea of a 24/7 culture of waking, work, and productivity has been a reality for some time, but in our digital age, it has seeped even into the bedroom, with our devices constantly linked to the world outside. Estimations suggest adults sleep on average 1-2 hours less per night today than in the 1960s."​
"Alongside this, more and more of us are choosing to live in huge cities, close to round-the-clock entertainment, opportunity, accessibility and convenience. By 2050, it’s predicted that more than two thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas, leaving behind quieter, more isolated, and often more poorly-resourced areas."​
"What is the cost of this to us? To be thought of as ‘successful’ today often means ‘productive,’ or in other words, the more you make and the faster you do so, the better you are – and this often translates into being better off." ​
​- Text from Shape Arts ​
"And yet without this quiet, and with decreasing access to nature, we grow ever more disconnected from the turning of the planet that sustains us, to the rhythm of night and day, waking and rest, that is so deeply wired into what we are."
About the Exhibition:​​
Our annual Shape Open exhibition this year explores the pressurised relationship we have with time, productivity, and the pace of our modern, increasingly digital, society."​
"For disabled people in particular, the idea of productivity has been closely linked to those of ‘value’ or ‘worth.’ In our accelerating culture, where does this leave anyone who needs or wants more time to think, act, function, or simply exist?"​
A photo of the wall text and table of
information at the entrance to the exhibition
Lo-fi Sick Woman Odyssey​
"Lo-fi Sick Woman Odyssey is about living and working from a bed in a sick body that cannot adhere to conventional schedules or routines, whether that be a workday or a regular sleep cycle. Charlie was influenced by the lo-fi girl animation popular on YouTube of a girl working at her desk, almost continuously, soundtracked by a 24/7 livestream of lo-fi music."​
​"Created with a lo-fi, collage aesthetic, using photos of herself from the various beds and bedrooms she has worked from since being ill, Charlie’s film engages with crip time, showing the unconventional hours she often keeps, working as and when she feels well enough to do so."
"The film has a surreal, dreamlike backdrop, illustrating the strangeness that can result from living and working in the same, small space, with no differentiation between resting time and working time."
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- Text from Shape Arts
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Learn more about Lo-fi Sick Woman Odyssey here.
Photos from the exhibition.