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Digbeth First Friday November

Friday, 1 November 2019
6 – 8pm

Join us for a special late opening of our current exhibitions: Weakest Link by Lady Skollie and Unreal Estate by Sofia Niazi.

Lady Skollie (b. 1987, Cape Town. Lives and works in Johannesburg). Lady Skollie uses ink, watercolour and crayon to defy taboos and talk openly about issues of sex, pleasure, consent, human connection, violence, and abuse. Lady Skollie appeared in This is the Gallery and the Gallery is Many Things X at Eastside Projects in September 2018 with the start of PAPSAK PROPAGANDA (Pt. 1). Recent international solo exhibitions include ‘Lust Politics’, Tyburn Gallery, London (2017), ‘Fire with Fire’, solo project at FNB Joburg Art Fair, Johannesburg, South Africa (2017), and ‘Mating Dance’, solo project at AKAA Art Fair, Paris, France (2017). Recent group exhibitions include ‘Close: Proximity, Intimacy, Tension’, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa, and ‘Right at the Equator’, Depart Foundation, Malibu, CA, USA (2018). She has been featured on BBC Africa and CNN International on ‘African Voices’, as well as on the BBC World Service’s online and radio series ‘In the Studio’. She was also included in the 2018 edition of OkayAfrica’s ‘100 Women’, an annual list which honours women across 10 different fields for their achievements and influence. Supported by ACE Ambition for Excellence fund, led by New Art Exchange, Nottingham this project sees spaces from across the UK create and develop new relationships with artists and organisations in Africa.

Sofia Niazi (b. 1986, London. Lives and works in Birmingham). As part of her fellowship research, Sofia Niazi has been investigating the visual culture of the housing market and exploring what the proliferation of online property websites and our relationship to them reveals about how we live in images today.

Sofia is part of One of My Kind (OOMK), a collaborative publishing practice with Rose Nordin, and Heiba Lamara. OOMK make publish and distribute books and printed works which arise from self-initiated projects. Commission by Create London in 2016, the trio set up and run Rabbits Road Press, a community Risograph printing press in Newham, London.
Recent projects include ‘In Common’ an artist residency at Serpentine Galleries London, 2019, ‘Big Family Press’ (South London Gallery, London, 2018), ‘Barbican Box: Collaboration’ (Barbican, London 2018), and ‘Sermons’, collaborative project supported by New Art Exchange, Nottingham (2018). Sofia has been commissioned to produce illustrations and artwork for Kew Gardens, The Guardian and Barbican, amongst other. Her writing has appeared in Dazed, The Inking Woman and The Library Was. She regularly presents her work and delivers workshops at universities, arts institutions and in community settings.