Grief must be Love with Nowhere to Go: Chris Alton & Emily Simpson
March 22 - May 4 2024
Launch event: Thu Mar 21, 6 - 8pm
Free & open to all
Read the Corridor 8 interview that Chris and Emily did with artist and writer Amelia Crouch about the project.
Grief must be Love with Nowhere to Go is a collaboration between Chris Alton and Emily Simpson. Having each been through a significant loss in their mid-20s, they found the English vocabulary for communicating experiences of grief and bereavement to be lacking. They began to invite conversations about loss through facilitation and art making, in hopes of finding common ground. In their own words:
Over the past 6 months we’ve been holding spaces for people to come together and share their experiences of living with loss. We’ve held shared dinners; where people are invited to bring a dish associated with the person they’ve lost. We’ve spent afternoons sewing with others; making wearable patches that communicate our grief (loosely influenced by Victorian mourning customs). We’ve invited people to sit together and share music that reminds them of the person who’s died or their broader experience of grief. With each gathering, the activity has acted as a ‘softener’ for difficult conversations, where the acts of sharing food, sewing, or listening to music create a space that words are invited to fill.
Through a large textile installation and seating made of reclaimed materials, the exhibition brings together some of these words, transforming the gallery space into an environment for reflection. Visitors can spend time within the space, where language becomes a shelter. The hope is that by going public with what living with loss looks like, we can better support each other collectively through the inevitable.
As part of the programme, we hosted an online conversation Access to Grief and will close the exhibition with Grief Karaoke (Sat 4 May). We also produced a zine, which you can read via the link below.
Documentation images credit: Harry Meadley
Emily Simpson is an artist, curator and workshop facilitator. Their work looks at love, lols and loss; explored through textiles, writing, zines, events, print-making and curation amongst other things. The work often questions how experiences (of loss, life, language) are shaped by the non-binary perspective and the political implications of this. Emily founded oh kay gall, an artist-led gallery which ran from 2018-2019 in York. Emily lives in Manchester and has a cat named Tofu.
Chris Alton is an artist, based in Manchester. His practice spans a range of media and approaches, including; socially engaged projects, video essays, textile banners, and publications. Each of his projects addresses an array of interconnected social, political, economic and environmental concerns.