CONTAGIOUS ACTS by Jamie Holman

Date

28 Feb 2025 – 1 June 2025

Tickets

Free Entry
 
 
 
 
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Contagious Acts is an exhibition showcasing a diverse range of new works by Jamie Holman, including sculpture, installation, painting, ceramics, textiles, audio, and moving image. Through this multidisciplinary practice, Holman delves into the interconnected histories of class, governance and the wider, often unexpected politics of collective gatherings, whether manifested in pop music, protest, or the two principal, intersectional spaces of working-class experiences – Labour/Leisure or Work/Play.

This sweeping narrative begins with the Bayeux Tapestry, a medieval artifact of power and propaganda, that threads its way through centuries, culminating in the social and cultural dynamics of the UK today. Holman’s work draws upon a diverse and layered range of references, seamlessly moving between medieval art history and contemporary cultural iconography, where record sleeves and song titles hold a significance akin to illuminated manuscripts and post-Reformation painting. His exploration extends into English equestrian art, acid house culture, the industrial revolution, Empire legacies, colonial histories, Brexit, Factory Records, and the enduring influence of The Fall.

Through this lens, Contagious Acts examines the rituals and aesthetics of gathering, from the medieval battlefield to the dancefloor, and from the factory to the football stadium. Holman interrogates the ways in which these spaces, still battlegrounds of power and protest, are also sites of cultural production and resistance. He proposes that the ancient act of coming together, whether in celebration, dissent, or as tradition, is deeply political and profoundly tied to questions of class, identity, and belonging that expose what he refers to as the ‘crisis of identity’ visible in contemporary Britain.

For Holman, these histories are not separate but deeply intertwined, weaving a tapestry of shared experiences and tensions that continue to reverberate through the UK’s cultural fabric. Contagious Acts invites viewers to reconsider the connections between past and present, recognising how the politics of gathering shape the narratives we live by today.

Artist Bio

A multidisciplinary artist, Jamie Holman Studios seeks to make visible the exciting connection and propositions that manifest when heritage collides with contemporary practice. His research often proposes the emergence of culture through the celebration of topics & movements including subcultures, trades unions, folklore, activism, mill workers, football, labour & poetry.