ANNA BURNS: GUT FEELINGS

Anna Burns’ most recent installation, GUT FEELINGS, is a questioning of human intuition’s role in the current age of algorithmic monotony. While push notifications press us to chug along in endless machine suggested rhythms, Burns urges us to pay attention to our gut – encouraging us all to allow the analogue sound, vibrant colours, ritualistic iconography and literal spilling of guts to physically move us through a speculative, ritual space of the future, as she imagines it.

Apps now tell us when to get up, when to get pregnant, who to date, and what to listen to. Led by Burns’ past experience in commercial set design, alongside day to day observations of a you-might-also-like lifestyle, GUT FEELINGS presents 13 female doll figures spilling their guts and attempting to connect them, to tap into an interconnected, cosmic and divine feminine spectacle.

Burns’ loud and witty visual language is the red thread through her work and bleeds across both arts and fashion, always heavily influenced by feminist theory and ritual history. Using analogue elements as modern relics, GUT FEELINGS is testament to that, referencing the superstitions of talisman or votive, alongside pop iconism of Janice the Muppet bassist. The guts themselves are colour coded, each colour a nod to frequencies and emotions that plead to become a united energy; like the synchronised heart rate of a choir when singing as one entity. And, referencing both ancient and modern uses of repetitive sound as a ritual carrier, a pair of custom made vinyl records kiss endlessly during the exhibition. 7 locked groove sounds repeat to form the new-wave healing chant that plays as the two heads cut into the vinyls meet each other’s lips, over and over.

Finally, surrounding the central altar, a set of 7 hand embellished fold out record covers in the form of crucifixes are set out along the walls of the cathedral-like Waiting Room. Suggestions of feminine and divine ritual through both numbers and forms run rampant through the space. The title of the exhibition will be activated via three separate events; a site- specific breath and body workshop, live music event, and poetic performance by South London collaborators inspired by, and to incite, (good old) gut feelings.

LIMITED EDITION WORKS

Photobooth Sessions is a limited first edition photographic book, featuring the 13 dolls celebrating their life outside of the commune. Through the Photo Booth the dolls are given agency to generate and control how they are portrayed. This autonomy is the opposite of objectification. Reversal of the modern selfie. Return to the elemental self. The dolls are humanised. Just as our contemporary digital universe renders humans into dolls. Designed by Marie Lan and Jon Butterworth, and shot by Burns over the course of one year in an analogue photobooth, the limited first edition book of 500 includes a poem, ‘GUT FEELINGS’, by writer Jess Cole in direct response to the installation.

Seven Kisses, a limited edition of 90 Vinyls of the exhibition’s 7 ritualistic and rhythmic sounds, have been pressed to be released alongside the exhibition. The use of analogue methods alongside tangible materials – film, paper, vinyl, cloth, thread and bodily sounds – represents a return to the hands-on cycle of making, doing and feeling.The inverse of the digital age. Sound as repetition. A modern chant from the commune. The locked groove shaped vinyls are pressed by Breed Media, they are artwork in themselves.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Sunday 23rd June – Performance and poetry evening: South East London based writer and journalist Jess Cole and friends will host a late afternoon performance art and poetry inspired by GUT FEELINGS, and accompanied by live music. Cole has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, WORMS, I-D and the imitable Marfa Journal and her dramaturgy has twice been shortlisted for the Royal Court writer’s programme, whilst also writing and performing poetry, most recently for James Messiah’s poetry night, Adult Entertainment.

LOCATION

GUT FEELINGS takes place in The Old Waiting Room at Peckham Rye station, a stunning vaulted hall which lay abandoned for sixty years before reopening as part of the station’s renovation. Designed in the French Second Empire style, the space was once adorned with huge gas chandeliers, providing a place for Victorian commuters to take a breather.

CREDITS AND THANK YOUS

Artist: Anna Burns
Festival Curator: Rebecca McCutcheon
Strategy and exhibition text: Daniela Maria Geraci
Poetry evening: Jess Cole
Lighting: Renegade Lighting
Printing: Calverts and Of Set
Sound Production: Ferdinand Graetz
Photo booth: Autofoto
Embroidery: Charlotte Macmillan
Show Production assistants: Francesca Graville, Fiona Yu , Solenne Palmer, Vyn Manuyakorm, Sandra Dileep , Yinel, Jinghui Zhang
Artwork Production assistants: Francesca Graville, Sarah Magnay, Michaela Edwards, Matilda Soderberg, Katie Mayo, Anna Baumgart

ABOUT ANNA BURNS

Anna is a Visual Artist and lecturer at Central St Martins based in Peckham, South London. Her work spans all manner of material and form, but is best known for the often fantastical, and sometimes teetering on whimsical, large-scale installations and commercial commissions created for luxury fashion brands including Hermes, Moet & Chandon, Prada, Moncler, Burberry, Bottega Veneta, Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga among others.

Her ideas and research are informed by her studies in fine art and her early career in fashion magazines, designing and directing concepts from drawing to final creation. Her ethic is obsessive and eccentric, interpreted within the chosen medium, spanning from costume to sculpture through to full experiential design.

Having worked closely throughout her career with titans in the arts, fashion and music sectors, her work has been featured in British Vogue, Elle Decoration and 10 Magazine to name just a few. She has designed costumes for musician Basement Jaxx and interiors for Selfridges, while also working as an associate lecturer at Central St Martins and contributor to the Guardian Design Magazine.

Punk Attitude with a talent for putting the wrong thing in the right place – British Vogue

GUT FEELINGS is presented as part of Making Connections 2024 an artistic series of events co-produced with Peckham creatives.