BAW, Sonia Boyce, David Burrows, Jill Casid, Tamsyn Challenger, Michael Curran, Dubmorphology, Luana Duvoisin Zanchi, Bruce Gilbert, Minna Haukka, Colin Herd, Kang Seung Lee, Trevor Mathison, Kym McDaniel, Emily Mulenga, Fran Painter-Fleming, Ellis Parkinson, Tamsin Pender, Maggie Roberts, The Charmers, Shahana Rajani, Amina Ross, Yo-E Ryou, A.L. Steiner, Simon Tyszko, Luke Turner, Joseph Walsh and Sasha Wortzel are among the artists contributing to this evolving, experimental 'exhillation'*.
'Manifesto for Sustainable Experimentation' is an exhibition of historic works and ephemera, interspersed with new commissions, performances, readings, workshops and other happenings to celebrate 30 years of Beaconsfield 1995-2025. Founders David Crawforth and Naomi Siderfin work in collaboration as BAW (Beaconsfield ArtWorks) to set the exhibitionary tone with visual and sonic interventions, inviting queer and ecofeminist artist A.L. Steiner to curate a screening programme from the US and Minna Haukka to turn archival excavation into live performance, preparing the Beaconsfield archive to move to its new home in Tate Britain.
The project title is imbued with irony, since making art for most artists is simultaneously unsustainable (due to lack of resource) and yet sustained by the vocational pursuit of aesthetic and political expression. The exhibition seeks to bring to light some of the strategies in which artists engage to survive and be heard.
An international screening programme curated by queer and ecofeminist A.L. Steiner extends the exhibition's reach across time zones and cultural borders in collaboration with artists Jill Casid, Kang Seung Lee, Kym McDaniel, Shahana Rajani, Amina Ross, Yo-E Ryou and Sasha Wortzel, forming a digital transatlantic bridge in intersectional resistance.
Manifesto for Sustainable Experimentation is more than a retrospective. It is a dynamic, durational exploration of how environment and identity is constructed through class, gender, and cultural memory – and a call to recognise ‘environment’ not only as physical landscape, but as the social and political ecosystems we inhabit and shape.
* Naomi Siderfin, 'Invisible Stitches: revealing the seam between making and curating'. PhD thesis, Slade School of Fine Art UCL, 2023.
