SET Woolwich, London, UK 2025
The images and the project are jointly copyrighted by artists Mengmeng Luo and Xinghao Liang.
At a time when contemporary art risks being pacified into sterile, consumable visuality within the white cube, this exhibition stakes its ground as a polyphonic apparatus of critique—tearing open the sanitized facade of exhibition-making. Bringing together recent works by nine core artists (Abby Coombs, Fan Bangyu, Jorge Chobin, Yao Liangqi, Mia Kosovic, Roman Shepherd-Dawson, Sarah Duffy, Sarah Stenberg, and Joe Smith) alongside six invited practitioners (Engin Eskici, Hamish Ford, Henry Glover, Paloma Moniz, Yi Xiaowan, and Wang Xixi), the project presents four live performances, a three-week ongoing performance, three moving-image works, and seven static installations.
Rather than acting as a neutral compilation, the exhibition reimagines the spatial performance Stage—held on May 9, 2025, at SET Woolwich in London—translating the event through non-linear moving images and spatial choreography. Curated by the artist-led collective The Afterpiece, the project fiercely rejects the lazy conventions of salon-style display. Submerged in a darkened architectural environment meticulously orchestrated by sound and light, the exhibition denies viewers the casual freedom of browsing. On-site lighting is strictly regulated by the exhibition director, forcing audiences to confront specific media within calculated timeframes. Here, moving images, acoustic interventions, and static installations cease to be passive backdrops; they operate as performative technologies that actively commandeer the flesh.
The works interweave a relentless matrix of critical inquiries: the violent friction between nature and industry, systemic urban alienation, pervasive sensory regulation, and the fractured terrain of somatic experience. Each artist pushes against the limits of their medium—from the moving image's autopsy of optical power loops to spatial installations that physically subvert the neutrality of the gallery container.
The artist himself serves as the exhibition director of the project, as well as the editor and producer of the film, orchestrating and constructing this immersive site through a distinct cinematic and spatial grammar.