Grief Must be Love With Nowhere to Go, Textiles, risograph printed publications, seating, 2024; Installed at Bloc Projects, March - May 2024Grief Must be Love With Nowhere to Go is a collaborative project by Chris Alton & Emily Simpson. Having each been through a significant bereavement in their mid-20s, Chris & Emily found the English vocabulary for communicating experiences of grief to be lacking. They began to make spaces for conversations about loss by hosting dinners, workshops, and othere events, in the hope of finding common ground.
“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 sing songs in memory or celebration of something they’re grieving for. With each gathering, the activity has acted as a ‘softener’ for difficult conversations, where the acts of sharing food, sewing, or singing together create a space where words come a little more easily.”
For their exhibition at Bloc Projects, the artists have sewn a large-scale textile installation, which incorporates ideas and reflections gathered throughout the dinners and workshops. It is accompanied by a new publication and seating made from reclaimed materials. The work transforms 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 can look like, we can better support each other through the inevitable.
Read a digital version of the publication here.
Press & Interviews:
BBC Radio Sheffield, interviewed by Paulette Edwards, 01/05/2024
BBC Radio Sheffield, interviewed by Paulette Edwards, 18/04/2024
Grief Must Be Love with Nowhere to Go: In Conversation with Emily Simpson and Chris Alton, interviewed by Amelia Crouch, Corridor8, 11/03/2024
Unique grief exhibition opens as part of Sheffield Life, Loss and Death Festival, Madeline Lake, ShefNews, 02/05/2024
In collaboration with:
Emily Simpson
Dedicated to:
Douglas, Eleanor, Jane, Kathy, Margaret, Phil
Participants:
Cally, Chris, Clara, Hayley, Ian, Jeff, Josh, Maggie, Melanie, Or, Robin, Ruth, Sue, Sue, Sunshine, Tony, Wing
With thanks to:
Sunshine Wong, Co-Director (Programme), Bloc Projects
Zoë Sawyer, Co-Director (Organisational), Bloc Projects
David Gilbert, Director, Bloc Projects (2021-23)
Jhinuk Sarkar, Accessibility Consultant
Joshua Hart, Art Psychotherapist
Will Marshall, Technician (Exhibition) & Fabricator (Furniture)
George Gibson, Printing & Binding (Publication)
Additional thanks to:
Compassionate Sheffield
Or Tshuva, Director, 422 Arts
Izzy Langhamer, Project Support Assistant, Bloc Projects
Clara Cheug & Gum Cheng, Karaoke Equipment
Commissioned by:
Bloc Projects
Funded by:
Bloc Projects
Arts Council England
