IWLMYITR Press Release

SET is pleased to present an exhibition of commissioned works by Ashleigh Fisk with new writing by Gwen Dupré. Opening on a leap year–a day looked upon as a fracture in standard time–Fisk and Dupré unfurl a history of subjugated longing. Through her latest body of work, Fisk presents a private world of queer and female narratives. Unbroken locked-letters, the elaborate edges of furnishings and stained glass windows map out these secret pasts. 

Fisk’s practice draws objects from collective memory, reciting queered histories through hand-crafted form. Scale swells and shrinks distorting perception and uprooting stability. Casted fixtures puncture the space as perforations into another time. Brushed in places by the indent of a fingerprint, Fisk’s ceramic forms become glistening signals to the room where many lives, both real and imagined, have been lived. 

The exhibition space becomes both a refuge and a confinement against the censorship of the outside world within domestic walls and embellished interiors. Fisk utilises sculptural work to trace the secluded space, with the cast-away contorted cherry stalks and serrated ceramic points that signal to the squirming and ruminating in Duprés text. Dupré’s writing presents a letter of a love unloved, a body of text that locks itself away from public eyes. Visitors are invited to take a locked letter as a keepsake, to which Fisk responds in the gallery with traces of barbed seeds, colourless sticky forms that linger on unwanting bodies. 

From the exhibition space, SET presents a curated bookshelf organised alongside both artists. The exhibition space will become home to several workshops over the coming weeks including locked-letter writing, visual scribing, and queer reading groups. 

This exhibition is supported by Arts Council England.

Listings 

(All free)

Sentimental Value: a love letter and emotional writing workshop, 10th March 2024

Queer Reading Group (Remote) 6th March 2024 

Coffee Afternoon, 14th March 2024 

Letter-locking Workshop, 16th March 2024 

Oak Gall Ink Workshop, 16th March 2024

Visual Scribing Workshop, 17th March 2024 

Queer Reading Group (Remote) 20th March 2024 

Exhibition Tour, 23rd March 2024 

Workshop with Hart Club, 24th March 2024 

Press Contacts 

For all press enquiries, please contact: 

Ellie Dobbs - ellie@setspace.uk 

For all artwork enquiries, please contact: 

Ashleigh Fisk (Artist) - contact@ashleighfisk.com 

Gwen Dupré (Writer) - missgwendupre@hotmail.com 

For all workshop enquiries, please contact: 

Verity Monroe - verity@setspace.uk 

Social media references: 

SET 

https://setspace.uk/event/i-will-live-many-years-in-this-room/

https://www.instagram.com/setsetsetsetsetset/ 

Ashleigh Fisk 

https://ashleighfisk.com/ 

https://www.instagram.com/ashleigh_fisk/ 

Notes for the Editors 

About SET 

SET is an artist-led charity and studio provider operating across eight London locations. We transform vacant buildings into affordable workspace - today, out of 13,500 artists that hold work space in London, 1,000 have studios at SET, and we provide the most affordable studios in London. We also run an arts and social club in Peckham, in what was formerly a baptist church, and we’ve transformed a HMRC building in Woolwich into a fully-licensed music venue. 

SET Centre CIO (Charity No. 117093)