E.M. Parry - 'Closet Dramas'
Join us for the opening of E.M. Parry's first solo exhibition this summer at hARTs Lane Gallery!
DETAILS: The show is the culmination of a body of work produced during Parry’s doctoral project in queer history and performance. Drawing on their background as a theatre maker, this body of visual and live participatory art work centres the trans body as an-archive, staging conversations with queer pasts, presents and futures. Historically, ‘Closet Drama’ referred to a play written not for performance - a genre associated with women’s writing and politically subversive material, often circulated in secret.
Encompassing installation, performance, sculpture and photography, these works probe the paradox and provocation of a non-theatre of the mind’s eye, where transience is foregrounded and liveness re-purposed as hauntedness, blurring the lines between artefact and event.
ABOUT THE ARTIST: E.M. Parry is a trans*disciplinary artist, award-winning designer and doctoral researcher in queer history and performance, working across intersecting worlds of scenography, performance, drag and visual art. Their emergent solo artistic practice flickers between durational performance, kinetic sculpture, drag act and seance, blurring process and product, artefact and event. They believe the interesting stuff happens in the cracks between places, genres, & bodies, and as such, their solo work can also be received as something that sits outside of categorisation. This event marks a significant milestone in their career, presenting their work in a solo exhibition for the first time.
PAST SHOWS: E.M. Parry’s durational work Pricklings has recently been performed at V&A Lates, Queer Noise at Dulwich Picture Gallery, Fix 23 Live Art Festival, Belfast, Emergency 23 Festival, Manchester, and Fractalia Festival at Toynbee Hall, London, as well as queer club nights including Riposte, Dialogue and Runt. Their photographic work Pieta was shortlisted for the 2024 Queer Britain Art Prize, and they have exhibited in shows including To Be A Man (Candid Arts), We Elizabethans (ONCA) and Invisible Visible (hARTs Lane). Their set and costume designs for an all-female and trans-inclusive, drag-inflected Richard III can currently be seen at Shakespeare’s Globe.
Pricklings and Fag Ends will be performed three times throughout the exhibition.
Performance timings will be announced soon.
We hope to see you therer! Bring queers, friends, lovers, exes, artists, writers, movers, makers.