Project O presents a recent video artwork considering Somerset House’s historical connection to the British Royal Navy. For eighty years from the end of the eighteenth century the Navy’s administrative offices occupied the building, a time when its activities were instrumental in the securing and ruling of an empire. In this new commission by Somerset House Studios, the first in a series of commissioned works exploring the subject, Project O asks questions of choice, inevitability, movement, defiance and surrender that arise in relation to thoughts about water - the waves will always rule us. The Navy Board, the administrative function of the Royal Navy was based in South Wing through most of the 19th century, helping secure one the largest empires the world has ever seen. In this period, the Navy played a significant (and contentious) role in the abolition of the slave trade. Until the Embankment was built, Somerset House was accessible directly by boat for naval personnel through what is now the Embankment arch. New Wing was an extension and remodelling by James Pennethorne of Admiralty residences, completed in 1856.

—

the waves will always rule us

tides

Moon

internal landscapes

desires for validation via dominion over that which is us

be it land, sea, the bodies of others

states of precarity

Unravelling

we occupy honour mourn the gaps

we stand centre-screen

body as portal-passage

we stand centre-screen

we occupy honour mourn the gaps

Unravelling

states of precarity

internal landscapes

be it land, sea, the bodies of others

desires for validation via dominion over that which is us

Moon

tides

the waves will always rule us

body

the gaps

Unravelling

states of precarity - internal landscapes

the waves will always rule us

This programme took place within Theaster Gates’s installation Black Image Corporation presented by Prada, The Vinyl Factory, and The Showroom. Collective Intimacy was inspired by Gates’s ethos of collaboration and The Showroom’s commitment to togetherness and communal knowledge, taking on multiple trans-located narratives of the current Black experience as a point of departure for a cosmopolitan worldview. In response to Gates’s reactivated spaces in Chicago and how his socially engaged projects enable communities to connect and grow, Collective Intimacy aimed to create a new space for people to gather, listen, converse, and contemplate amongst a fusion of art, design, music, and everyday life.

Taking place at both 180 The Strand and The Showroom, Collective Intimacy hosted interdisciplinary interventions by artists, musicians, designers, writers, thinkers, collectives and members of the public, who are all invited to distort notions of selfhood and togetherness in the spirit of creating a global community.

Black Image Corporation presents distinct spaces creating a myriad of possibilities for collective engagements, featuring an installation of Gates’s art objects, furnishings, and new films that capture the methodologies of urban renewal and community activation founding his practice. Pieces from Chicago imbued with powerful histories, uses, and localities resonate with distinctive lounge design from here in London – like a love letter between two cities, under the roof of a new House.