We Exist with W.H.Y. will be offering tutorials/ workshops and a studio drop-in day where all participants can come and learn how to screenprint on screens and take away their artwork on print. If you have pre-existing artwork and would like to take a small run of your prints or want to learn/ experiment with something new or just want to come and chat and hang out and drink tea/ coffee/ crisps and biscuits pop by. All materials will be provided and free. Just turn up in clothes you wouldn’t mind getting messy and inked on.
W.H.Y. is a collective facilitator of We Exist, a glitch-disciplinary artist and they are a founder of Distribution of Power, which is a learning collective that delivers free-to-access workshops to people from marginalised backgrounds, teaching analogue audio/ visual design, synthesisers, circuit bending possibilities interrogating sustainable and socially responsible practices to diversify experimental and analogue performance, production, arts and music.
The workshop will be facilitated by Zara Truss Giles & June Lam
W.H.Y:
From February 2023 W.H.Y. accepted an offered placement on the Mutton Fist Press printmaking residency programme in light of W.H.Y.’s & Distribution of Power’s (Zara Truss Giles’) “strong solo work and outstanding commitment to socially engaged practice”. During the residency, W.H.Y. has been learning how to apply modulated synthesiser electronics engineering practices to silkscreen and printing techniques to produce playable sonic/ audio prints. This process is a nod to the artist's Jamaican heritage looking at soundsystem culture and histories and also highlights the position of trans/non-binary and women-identifying individuals in electronics engineering concerning modular synthesisers and communication engineering.
W.H.Y. will also be researching and developing how to include electro-formed sculptures which behave like transistors and resistors on a screen-printed circuit board. The artist has been learning this technique from mentor Margo Broom Electronic engineer). During the residency, the artist will facilitate a programme of workshops incorporating their learning and skill-building. This will be the artist’s first time exploring work/ installation and programming as a screen print artist in response to non-typical ways of being, body mind and marginalised experiences. W.H.Y. is thinking about how screenprinting from a neurodivergent/ disabled understanding.
WE EXIST:
Established in the summer of 2020, We Exist is a mutual aid collective providing support for trans people in the London. We Exist has developed into a collective ran organisation providing spaces for trans* people to platform their work, and their ideas and discuss issues affecting the community. This exists through taking up space in the city of London through pop-up cafes, art spaces, exhibitions and more. Between October 2020 and January 2021 more than 40 trans and non-binary artists took up studio spaces in central London as part of the We Exist collaboration with The Koppel Project. Please find a film here detailing this residency - https://vimeo.com/514711106. The ultimate aim of We Exist is to provide directly, available funds for trans* people who need it to pay for healthcare needs in the face of ongoing failings from the current government and health service through the Trans Healthcare Fund.