Onyeka Igwe, ‘The Miracle on George Green’, (2022). Film still. Courtesy of the artist.
‘Primers’ offer an opportunity to hear from artists during the development of new projects with The Common Guild. As part of the upcoming project ‘anywhere in the universe’, this event presents commissioned artist Onyeka Igwe. Igwe will screen her film ‘The Miracle on George Green’ (2022) and discuss her practice to date.
Onyeka Igwe, ‘No Archive Can Restore You’, (2020). Film still. Courtesy of the artist.
Onyeka Igwe is an artist and researcher working between cinema and installation. She is born and based in London, UK. Through her work Onyeka is animated by the question “how do we live together?” with a particular interest in sensorial, spatial, and non-canonical ways of knowing. She uses embodiment, voice, archives, narration and text to create structural “figure-of-eights”, a format that exposes a multiplicity of narratives.
‘The Miracle on George Green’ tells a collective social history of the UK tradition of the commons – land collectively owned and used to gather, play, and debate. The film centres around the George Green treehouse in East London. In the early 1990s, when the old sweet chestnut tree that housed the treehouse was threatened, people across the world wrote letters to the treehouse as part of a campaign to save it.
Solo exhibitions and commissions include ‘A Repertoire of Protest (No Dance, No Palaver)’, MoMA PS1, New York (2023) ; ‘The Miracle on George Green’, Highline, New York (2022); ‘a so-called archive’, LUX, London; ‘THE REAL STORY IS WHAT’S IN THAT ROOM’, Mercer Union, Toronto, Canada, (both 2021), ‘There Were Two Brothers’, Jerwood Arts, (2019), and ‘Corrections’ with Aliya Pabani, Trinity Square Video, Toronto, Canada (2018).
In 2022 Igwe was nominated for the Jarman Award and shortlisted for the Max Mara Art Prize for Women 2022–2024. She was awarded the 2021 Foundwork Artist Prize; the 2020 Arts Foundation Futures Award for Experimental Short Film; and was the 2019 recipient of the Berwick New Cinema Award in 2019.
Further Info
Additional Links
Onyeka Igwe, ‘A Repertoire of Protest (No Dance, No Palaver)’, MoMA PS1.
Event Details
This in-person event takes place on Thursday 16th April from 6–8pm at the Kelvin Hall Lecture Theatre.
'Primers' are presented in collaboration with Dr. Dominic Paterson at the University of Glasgow.
Tickets
Free. Book in advance here.
Location
Kelvin Hall Lecture Theatre, 1445 Argyle St, G3 8AW
Access
Kelvin Hall Lecture Theatre is on the ground floor of Kelvin Hall. The venue is wheelchair accessible with accessible toilets.
Films will be screened with subtitles and captions where available. ‘The Miracle on George Green’ is twelve minutes long,
