12 pm – 4.45 pm
Recoverist Month’s finale; A one-day, queer gallery takeover of Manchester Art Gallery exploring themes on sex, intimacy, desire, respect and consent within the LGBTQ+ community.
After a hugely successful launch at Manchester Pride in 2023, with a 90s-style radio show-themed art installation, lead artist Harold Offeh brings Let’s Talk About Chemsex to Manchester Art Gallery, in a one-day collaboration with local and international artists: Valentin Ranger (Paris/London), Ghetto Fabulous (Manchester), mandla (Manchester), Daniel Rey (London) and Sam Cottingham (London/Frankfurt).
Rey’s live artwork Collective Cuddles, Ranger’s films, mandla’s choreo-poem, Ghetto Fabulous’ freestyle moves, and Cottingham’s one-person play bring a fresh, challenging and celebratory look at LGBT+ sex and relationships. Offeh will debut the co-created double A-side EP, Anticipation <—>Anxiety and A Warm Hug.
Commissioned by Portraits of Recovery, Let’s Talk About Chemsex is inspired by American hip-hop group Salt N Pepa’s singles Let’s Talk about Sex and Let’s Talk about AIDS; tracks which dramatically destigmatised discussion of sex and desire in popular culture. Let’s Talk About Chemsex seeks to map and survey a diverse range of Chemsex experiences without guilt, shame, or stigma
Led by Offeh, over the past year Let’s Talk about Chemsex developed into a series of workshops, with a group of individuals working collaboratively to create and produce music, informed by lived experience of sex on chems.
The two tracks, Anticipation <—>Anxiety and A Warm Hug, will be released as a 12-inch, double A-side limited-edition vinyl, which will be available to buy for the first time at this unique takeover.
All those contributing to the two songs have demonstrated extraordinary honesty, bravery, candour and intimacy about experiences that can be clouded in silence or shame—music production and recording are facilitated by Brighter Sound, and music producer Niall O’Conghaile aka The Niallist.
Reserve a free spot here.
Let’s Talk About Chemsex is led and commissioned by Portraits of Recovery in collaboration and partnership with Manchester Art Gallery and Brighter Sound.
Gallery Takeover Artists Present
Harold Offeh and Ghetto Fabulous: Anticipation <—> Anxiety and A Warm Hug
Offeh, known for his recreation of Grace Jones’ iconic Island Life album cover, debuts the co-authored, double A-side EP vinyl Anticipation <—> Anxiety and A Warm Hug.
A Warm Hug – mellow musings on the absence of real intimacy and contemplative reflective comedown
Born out of Queer Black joy; three Ghetto Fabulous dancers with dynamic moves will creatively freestyle as an improvised response to the two tracks. Their performative movements as informed by the listening experience, from frenetic tempo to ambient introspection.
Ghetto Fabulous is a dance and visual arts company that aims to excite, entertain and have fun with the projects it embarks on, inspired by fashion, music, film, photography and the ever-changing world. Not afraid to explore the political and the personal, The Ghetto Collection is a unique voice in the UK art landscape.
Daniel Ray: Collective Cuddles
Five Latin men, all dressed in matching white T-shirts and light blue jeans, gather on The Cuddling Platform, a large denim cushion. There, they engage in gentle, and tender physical contact, exploring notions of human connection, queer intimacy, and male tenderness. The work invites audiences to question conventional notions of masculinity in patriarchal societies and highlights the significance of expressing affection beyond traditional romantic relationships.
Rey is a Venezuelan-Spanish multidisciplinary artist based in London. His work spans performance, painting, moving images, and installation, aiming to generate ‘Meditative Experiences.’ His practice explores the intersection of queer bodies, the built environment, and spirituality
Valentin Ranger: Going to the Meta-hospital/Chem’s Back Trauma
Ranger brings two films to the takeover. Going to the Meta-hospital (2022) combines drawings and 3D, physical and digital, still images and moving images, to recreate a constantly transforming world, where humans are invited to redefine themselves. Meta-hospital is a place of welcome, repair, and care for all virtual bodies, without discrimination.
In the silent Chem’s Back Trauma (2022) blood, illness, and secretions constitute the language of the patients, who double up like glitches on the waiting room benches, all guilty of the sin of the flesh.
Ranger is an artist who works between Paris and London. His work creates a dreamlike world in constant mutation, reflecting the human body and the main subject of study. Moving from one medium to another, he writes the epic of a community where marginalized or invisible populations—sexual and gender minorities—come together to build new forms of solidarity.
mandla: to the slaughter
To the slaughter, will be performed as a spoken word choreopoem (a blend of poetry, storytelling, music and dance) which explores the shadows of intimacies, of a love that cuts away at every piece of you until you can’t even speak truth to what has happened.
mandla is a Zimbabwean-born, agender and queer writer and performer whose work often draws on the artist’s intersectional existence. Using words as a medium, the artist is heavily concerned with communicating the many sensations associated with being a person. mandla uses names in place of English pronouns, this is because gendered pronouns do not exist in mandla’s first language, isiNdebele. The artist’s first solo show as British as a watermelon toured across the UK and internationally.
Sam Cottingham: On
A one-act poetic play in which the ghost of a Deliveroo driver wanders on stage. What they want to say is unclear, perhaps because a ghost might talk differently to a living person, but they seem to describe an experience of unrequited love. Cottington’s new work questions the assumption that plays should build cohesive characters that are comfortably absorbed within the narrative they are in.
Cottington is an artist and writer based between London and Frankfurt. His written work takes form as plays, novellas and short stories and his artistic work spans painting, sculpture, video and installation. He studied Art and Art History at Goldsmiths University in London and is currently studying Fine Art at Städelschule in Frankfurt.
LET’S TALK ABOUT THE CHEMSEX VOICEMAIL CARE LINE
You can also anonymously call our Let’s Talk About Chemsex Voicemail Care-line, on 0161 850 7852 to take part in the project. Leave a message and share your thoughts and feelings on Chemsex, or themes of consent, HIV, and queer intimacy without guilt, shame, or stigma. These anonymous recordings will contribute to an audio archive for informing ongoing project development. All reflections are welcome!
A Recoverist Month event that, through the arts, changes the conversation on substance use and recovery and delivered as part of CHAORDIC – three radical art commissions redefining recovery from substance use.
Recoverist = Recovery + Activist
Recoverist Month September 2024 is an initiative led by Portraits of Recovery: a pioneering, Manchester-based, visual arts charity.
