Spike Island to present new exhibitions from Rosemary Mayer and Lawrence Abu Hamdan

Spike Island is to present Ways of Attaching, the first institutional survey exhibition of artist Rosemary Mayer (1943-2014) and 45th Parallel, a new film commission by artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan. 

Ways of Attaching spans over forty years of Mayer's prolific and varied practice, from large fabric sculptures, travel diaries and fleeting performances of the 1970s through to pastels, watercolours and other works on paper from the 1990s and 2000s. Highlighting Mayer's formal interest in draping, knotting and tethering, the show focuses on the construction of real and imagined networks, in which friends and historical figures feature in expressions of affinity and attachment.

Mayer was born in Brooklyn and lived in New York City all her life. She studied Classics before pursuing art; an influence that persists throughout her work, which is populated by references to historical figures, artworks and writing, from medieval literature to Mannerist painting. In 1972 Mayer co-founded A.I.R., the first not-for-profit, artist-directed gallery for women artists in the United States. It was there that she mounted a solo show of fabric sculptures titled after women from the Middle Ages and Antiquity: from Galla Placidia (1973), the regent of the Western Roman Empire, to Hroswitha (1972- 73), the early medieval poet Hrotsvit of Gandersheim. Ways of Attaching marks the first time that these sculptures have been displayed together since.

Also included in the exhibition are works on paper, photographs and documentation relating to Mayer's performances of the late 1970s, which she called "temporary monuments". Incorporating materials such as weather balloons, ribbons, and snow, these ephemeral works were shaped by a unique lexicon connecting sites to time, drawing together the grounded and the cosmic. 

Ways of Attaching marks the most comprehensive presentation of Rosemary Mayer's artistic practice to date, and the first time her work has ever been shown in the UK. The title is purposefully equivocal: Attaching is not only a method for binding materials together, but also for establishing emotional connections with friends and peers, past and present, which was central to Mayer's understanding of art. 

45th Parallel is Lawrence Abu Hamdan's first major solo exhibition in the UK since winning the 2019 Turner Prize. Focusing on the Haskell Free Library and Opera House - a unique municipal site that straddles the jurisdictions of Canada and the U.S. - the work continually recasts the border as at once powerful yet facile, absurd yet lethal. 

Originally built in 1904, the Haskell Building was designed as a symbol of unity between Canada and the U.S., and is one of the only cross-border theatres in the world. Anyone can enter unchecked and, though a thick black line runs through the entire building, once inside the border all but disappears. 

Filmed on location to activate the legal and symbolic potential of the site, 45th Parallel unfolds as a monologue in five acts, performed by acclaimed filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel. The story centres on Hernandez vs. Mesa, a judicial case covering the fatal 2010 shooting of an unarmed 15 year old Mexican national by a U.S. Border Patrol agent. At the U.S. Supreme Court, Mesa's bullet, which crossed the U.S./Mexico border, began to implicate missiles fired in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakisatn, Iraq, Somalia, and Libya. If this murder could be tried in the U.S., so too could 91,340 drone strikes. 

Each act of the monologue is demarcated by a scenographic change in the hand-painted backdrop on the Opera House stage. Starting with the original backdrop of a picturesque Venice canal, two newly commissioned scenes also form part of an installation at Spike Island. One references a 1920 painting by Richard carline of an aerial view of Damascus and its surrounding landscaoe, and the other the concrete culvert of the 2010 El Paso-Juarez cross-border shooting. 

Highlighting how borders are not just lines, but, rather, richly layered spaces, the changing backdrops draw attention to the film's underlying questions about shifting perspectives and vantage points. 

Together, the film and installation render the Haskell Free Library and Opera House as a political and geography grey zone, reminding us how free movement, free knowledge and free space are constantly under threat.