Lunchtime online talk: Mandy EL-SAYEGH, Helena HUNTER, Renan LARU-AN Wed 9 Feb 2022 / 1pm-2pm online

Free lunchtime discussion with the artists and curator of the current LUX exhibition, Sourcebook in discussion with LUX Director Benjamin Cook. Conversation will be broadcast live on Vimeo with an opportunity for audience members to submit questions by text. Conversation will be auto captioned.

Mandy EL-SAYEGH has a highly process-driven practice rooted in an exploration of material and language. In her paintings, table vitrines, immersive installations, and videos, El-Sayegh creates layered anthologies of found text and images. Set adrift from their original contexts, these fragments become open to multiple readings that are personally, socially or politically determined and undermine the supposed objectivity of language and media. In 2022, she will be featured in The British Art Show, the largest touring exhibition of contemporary art in the UK. Solo exhibitions of El-Sayegh’s work have been organised at the Sursock Museum, Beirut, Lebanon (2019); Bétonsalon, Paris, France (2019); Chisenhale Gallery, London, UK (2019); Lehmann Maupin, Hong Kong (2019); The Mistake Room, Guadalajara, Mexico (2018); and Lehmann Maupin, New York, US (2018).

Helena HUNTER works at the intersections of visual art, poetry and performance. Her artworks utilise critical poetic and performative modes in relation to environmental change and biodiversity loss, often blending sites such as the field, lab, gallery, archive and museum. She has a Master’s in Fine Art from Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. Her current exhibition Falling Birds is on display at the Horniman Museum and Gardens, London. Helena has a collaborative practice, Matterlurgy, with sound artist Mark Peter Wright. Hunter has presented her work at Delfina Foundation, Gazelli Art House, Tate, Gasworks, Arts Catalyst, ICA, Ambika P3, The Showroom, V22, IMT Gallery, Barbican Art Gallery, [space], Art 13 Art Fair, DAM Projects, Raven Row Gallery, (London); BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (Newcastle), Tramway (Glasgow), MIMA (Middlesbrough), HIAP Frontiers of Retreat (Helsinki), Jerome Zodo Contemporary (Milan), Bòlit Contemporary Arts Centre (Girona), Lydgalleriet (Bergen), Rogaland Kunstsenter (Stavanger), Forum Schlossplatz (Aarau), OFF COURSE Art Fair (Brussels), ArtVerona (Verona), City of Women Festival (Ljubljana). Her poetic writing is published in MAI Journal of Feminism and Visual Culture, SomethingOther, Reliquiae and in the publications Posthuman Ecologies edited by Rosi Braidotti and Simone Bignall and The Midden edited by Jenni Nurmenniemi and Tracey Warr.

Renan LARU-AN is a researcher based in Sultan Kudarat, the Philippines. He creates exhibitionary, public, and research programs that study ‘insufficient’ and ‘subtracted’ images or subjects at the juncture of development and integration projects. Ongoing projects include But Ears Have No Lids (2021) and Promising Arrivals, Violent Departures (2018). Since 2017 the Public Engagement and Artistic Formation Coordinator at the Philippine Contemporary Art Network, Laru-an has (co-)curated exhibitions and festivals, including the 6th Singapore Biennale, Singapore; A Tripoli Agreement (2018), Sharjah Art Foundation; The Artist and the Social Dreamer (2017), Forecast Festival at Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt, Berlin; the 8th OK.Video – Indonesia Media Arts Festival, Jakarta; and the 1st Lucban Assembly, Quezon, amongst others. He is a curator of the 2nd Biennale Matter of Art, Prague and Curatorial Advisor to the 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh. Laru-an edited Writing Presently (PCAN, 2019), an anthology of recent writing on contemporary art from the Philippines.