Rosie Ridgway: Phantom Power

This summer, Focal Point Gallery presents Rosie Ridgway: Phantom Power, the artist’s first solo exhibition in the UK. Comprising all new work, this exhibition at Focal Point Gallery brings together interactive film, sound, costume and performance. A highly prolific and original artist, for over two decades Ridgway has explored collectivity within artmaking. What is involved within group dynamics? Where do individual and collective identities intersect? What are the strange and multiple was groups occupy space together?

For Focal Point Gallery, Ridgway explores bands and the collective making experience, drawing upon the unpredictability of human interaction within an imperfect world. Ridgway’s collaborators often challenge ableist perspectives, encouraging attentiveness and generosity towards difference. Akin to a video game, visitors to the gallery can select 5 of Ridgway’s real-life collaborators from a cohort of 12, who then performance together, variations on melodic themes, which in turn are beset by interruptions from a roguish character dancing across a 3-screen installation. A second gallery is kitted out as an impromptu rehearsal room, inviting visitors to become creators, either alone or as part of a group dynamic, the malleable, adaptive nature of which is intrinsic to being and acting in the world together.

Ridgway’s practice pushes the boundaries of collaboration as an artform on its own terms. Unpredictable and unapologetically experimental, Ridgway’s practice is centred on enabling the creativity of others. At its heart, the exhibition unfolds as an unscripted quest, a search for new forms of kinship beyond identify or history. It gestures towards a collective being built through chance, curiosity and a willingness to step into the unknown.