September gave us two evenings, in two very different spaces, and together they say something about what we're building.
Sound on Art at Maslow's Kensington
On 17 September we presented three works by Roberta Volpe and Sound Hybrid Artist (S.H.A.) at Maslow's Kensington.
The pair make dual artworks: an original painting, and a bespoke vinyl record composed in response to it. The two halves are one piece. You haven't fully encountered the work until you have heard it as well as seen it.
That gave us a problem worth solving. Three works, three records, one room — played through speakers, you get either one piece at a time or three pieces fighting each other.
Our answer was to keep the sound analogue and make the listening wireless. Three turntables played the original records. Each fed a radio transmitter on its own frequency. Every guest was given a pair of headphones and could tune freely between the three: stand in front of a canvas, turn the dial, hear the work that belongs to it.
What happened then was better than we hoped. People listened to entire records — standing in front of a single painting for the length of a side, then moving on to the next. Several told us afterwards which was their favourite and how many times they had returned to it.
Midway through the evening, our Curatorial Director Olivia Abando and S.H.A. spoke on the mic about how these pieces are actually made: how a canvas becomes a score, and what passes between him and Roberta in the process. It was one of the most illuminating parts of the night.
Our thanks to Maslow's Kensington for hosting, and to Juliette LaGuardia Lee, whose help made it happen. To Roberta Volpe and S.H.A. for trusting us with work this unusual. And to Savva Shilin and Anna Kostina, who made the evening run the way it did.
An Evening at Sevente
Eleven days later, on 28 September, we were on Hackney Road for something altogether more relaxed.
Sevente holds a current PickArt collection — works by Abi Ola, Lewis Deeney, Larissa Barddal Fantini, Sabina Plamenova and Libby Hoffenberg — and the evening was an open invitation to come and see it properly, in person, with a drink in hand. For one night only, select works were offered at event prices.
The centre of the evening was a conversation between Olivia Abando, exhibiting artist Libby Hoffenberg, and Peter Ajuchi, Sevente's event manager. They talked about what venues like Sevente actually do for the art world — how a café and bar on Hackney Road can become a place where people encounter contemporary work without the thresholds a gallery puts in the way. They talked about why seeing a piece in real life matters, and why an artwork is at once an object you can stand in front of and considerably more than that.
The Q&A was as good as the panel. Art lovers and working artists both spoke up, and the conversation turned to how work gets made and how people come to find it. That exchange — between the people who make the work and the people discovering it — is exactly what these rooms are for.
Thank you to Sevente for the welcome, to Peter Ajuchi for joining the conversation, and to Libby Hoffenberg for talking about her practice so openly.
What's Next
Two evenings, two very different registers: one built around a piece of technical problem-solving, the other around a conversation. Both came back to the same thing: art is better encountered in person, in a real room, among people.
PickArt continues to represent the three-piece collaboration between Roberta Volpe and S.H.A. If you'd like to enquire about the availability of those works, or about hosting an evening like either of these in your own space, we'd love to hear from you. We also know the duo has more in the pipeline. We're looking forward to seeing it, and to showing it to the world.