Dancing On My Own is a two-day exhibition of artist’s film and video. Shorts by Mark Leckey, Morgan Quaintance and Keith Piper play throughout the day, accompanied by an evening screening of feature length films by Larry Achiampong (Saturday 21st), and Sarah Miles and Zarina Nares (Sunday 22nd).
Doors 3-9pm, with an evening screening at 7pm
Tickets: Pay What You Can
Dancing On My Own is a two-day exhibition of artist’s film and video exploring the sometimes fragmented relationships between belonging identity and memory. Shorts by Mark Leckey, Morgan Quaintance and Keith Piper play throughout the day, accompanied by an evening screening of feature length films by Larry Achiampong (Saturday 21st), and Sarah Miles and Zarina Nares (Sunday 22nd).
Stuart Hall describes identity as unfixed – undergoing constant evolution shaped by our experiences and environment. Dancing On My Own intends to create a space where these shifts and fluxes can be experienced, individually and collectively. Fragmented yet connected.
The exhibition is curated by Jasmine Ula, as part of her MFA Curation at the NFTS. Her curatorial practice lies between the space of cinema and exhibition, focusing on video art, moving image and artist film.
Full Programme:
Day 1: Saturday 21st November
Doors: 3pm
3-7pm
We Are (Untitled), Mark Leckey (2001)
Early Years, Morgan Quaintance (2019)
Nation’s Finest, Keith Piper (1990)
7pm
Wayfinder, Larry Achiampong (2022)
Day 2: Sunday 22nd November
Doors: 3pm
3-7pm
We Are (Untitled), Mark Leckey (2001)
Early Years, Morgan Quaintance (2019)
Nation’s Finest, Keith Piper (1990)
7pm
No Place (Looking Back + Looking Forward), Sarah Miles (2005)
Real Feelings, Zarina Nares (2026)
Wayfinder, Larry Achiampong, 2022
Larry Achiampong (b. 1984, UK, Ghanaian British) is a BAFTA longlisted (2023) and Jarman Award nominated (2021 & 2024) artist, filmmaker and musician. He completed a BA in Mixed Media Fine Art at University of Westminster in 2005 and an MA in Sculpture at The Slade School of Fine Art in 2008. In 2020 Achiampong was awarded the Stanley Picker fellowship and in 2019 received the Paul Hamlyn Artist award in recognition for his practice. A tutor on the Photography MA programme at Royal College of Art between 2016 – 2021, Achiampong has also served on the Board of Trustees at Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts, 2017-2022), facilitating art policy in the UK and internationally.
His projects employ film; still imagery; aural and visual archives; live performance; objects; sound and game design to explore ideas surrounding class, gender, cross-cultural and digital identity.
With works that examine his communal and personal heritage – in particular, the intersection between popular culture and the residues of colonisation, Achiampong crate-digs the vaults of history. These investigations examine constructions of ‘the self’ through the activity of splicing the audible and visual materials of personal and interpersonal archives, offering multiple perspectives that reveal the deeply entrenched inequalities in contemporary society.
Recent solo exhibitions include 'Wayfinder', Turner Contemporary/MK Gallery/BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Margate, Milton Keynes, Gateshead (2022-2023); 'Relic Traveller: Where You and I Come From, We Know That We Are Not Here Forever', Phi Foundation for Contemporary Art, Montreal (2021); 'Beyond the Substrata', curated by Norman Rosenthal, Copperfield Gallery at Frieze Focus, 12 Piccadilly Arcade, London (2020); 'When the Sky Falls', John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (2020); 'Pan African Flag For The Relic Travellers Alliance & Relic Traveller, Phase 1', 019, Ghent (2019); 'Dividednation', Primary, Nottingham (2019).
We Are (Untitled), Mark Leckey, 2001
Mark Leckey is a British artist (b. 1964, Birkenhead, Wirral) living and working in London. He received a BA from Newcastle Polytechnic in 1990. Leckey works across video, installation, sound and performance drawing on popular culture, youth and subculture. His work addresses memory, class, desire and identity, as well as themes of melancholy, nostalgia and our relationship with technology.
Leckey’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Espace Louis Vuitton, Tokyo (2024); Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin (2022, 2020); Tate Britain, London (2019); Glasgow International, Scotland (2018); MoMA PS1, New York (2016-2017); Museo Madre, Naples, Italy (2015) Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2015); WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels, Belgium (2014); the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2013); Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, United Kingdom (2013); Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada (2012); Serpentine Gallery, London (2011); Abrons Art Center, New York (2009); and the Guggenheim Museum, New York (2008); He has participated in the Belgrade Biennial (2021), Carnegie International (2013), 55th Venice Biennale (2013), and 8th Gwangju Biennial (2010). In 2008, Leckey was awarded the Turner Prize.
Early Years Morgan Quaintance, 2019
Morgan Quaintance is a London-based artist and writer. His practice remains responsive to contemporary experience and so largely eschews the rehearsal of set themes. However, interests in the human condition, the cultic milieu, counterculture, ethnography, the built environment, Afro-Caribbean, African American, East Asian and British histories are all mainstays.
His moving image, photography, performance and installation work has been shown and exhibited widely at festivals and institutions including: MOMA, New York; Konsthall C, Sweden; Courtisane Film Festival, Ghent; Cafe OTO, London; Tokyo Museum of Photography, Tokyo; International Film Festival Rotterdam; John Hansard Gallery, Southampton; and Third Horizon Film Festival, Miami.
He was the recipient of the 2025 Jarman Award. He was a 2024 MacDowell Fellow. He was the recipient of the 2022 ARTE Award at Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg; in 2021, the Best Documentary Short Film Award at Tacoma Film Festival, USA; the Explora Award at Curtocircuito International Film Festival, Santiago de Compostela; the UK Short Film Award at Open City Documentary Film Festival, London, the Jean Vigo Prize for Best Director at Punto de Vista, Spain, and the Best Experimental Film Award at Curtas Vila do Conde, Portugal; in 2020, the New Vision Award atCPH:DOX, Denmark and the Best Experimental Film award at Curtas Vila Do Conde, Portugal .
The Nation's Finest, Keith Piper, 1990
Keith Piper Born in Malta in 1960 and raised in Birmingham, Keith Piper studied art at Trent Polytechnic and The Royal College of Art. He was a founding member of the BLK Art Group in the 1980s. The group fought to raise the profile of Black artists through exhibitions and conferences, a contribution whose significance is only now being recognized in the development of 20th century British art. Piper's initial interests in collage and print media contributed to a pioneering use of early computer technology, not only as a tool for video editing and effects but also for it's potential interactivity, exemplified by his 1997 CDRom and website for inIVA, Relocating the Remains. Piper's multi-screen, multi-media installations, often taking their sources from popular sources such as television, explore representations of race within history and culture.
Over the past 30 years Piper has used a variety of media, from painting, photography and installation to digital media, video and computer based interactivity. His work has shown extensively; with solo exhibitions at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, The Camden Arts Centre, London, The Orchard Gallery, Derry and The New Museum, New York.
No Place (Looking Back + Looking Forward) Sarah Miles, 2005
Sarah Miles was born in Epsom, Surrey. Brought up in West Dorset, she studied drama at South Warwickshire College and English and American studies at the University of East Anglia. Miles’ award-winning films blend fragmentary and evocative narratives of family and memory with references from cinema and literature.
Miles’ films have been screened extensively as single screen and installation works at cinemas and galleries and broadcast on Channel 4, Canal 4 and BBC2. Screenings at international film festivals include Oberhausen, Rotterdam, Melbourne and Chicago, and artist presentations include: Tate Britain; Arnolfini UK, Pacific Film Archive, Image Forum, Japan and Los Angeles Film Forum. She has lectured in Visual Theory at KIAD and freelance work includes pop promos and DVD extras. She lives and works in London and has a son.
Real Feelings, Zarina Nares, 2015
Zarina Nares is a New York City-born artist, the daughter of Indian and British parents, raised in the Sufi Muslim tradition. She studied Electronic Music, Computing, and Technology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her interdisciplinary practice searches for the sites where emotional, political, and aesthetic forces collapse into one another.
Nares has presented solo exhibitions at Visit (Newburgh, New York), HEART (New York), and Galeria Na Wysokim Poziomie (Poznań, Poland), and has exhibited at Camera Austria (Graz), TIMESHARE (Los Angeles), Blade Study x HEART, and The Source (New York). Her work has been screened at ICA London, EARTH (New York), Forma (London), and Toxi (Zurich). She has been featured in ARTnews, T Magazine, Autre Magazine, and Screen Slate. Her books have sold at Printed Matter and Pioneer Works. She is the founder and co-director of TRIBECA GALLERY.