Speaking in Tongues

This exhibition brings together three influential artists: Susan Hiller, Pavel Büchler and Sonia Boyce. Each has an important place in the development of contemporary art in Britain.

Sonia Boyce charts the experience of growing up as a black woman in a white society, exploring the role of gender, religion, politics and popular culture in the formation of contemporary black life in the UK.

Pavel Büchler, born in Czecheslovakia (“a country that no longer exists”) describes his practice as “making nothing happen”, while bringing a particular East European perspective to contemporary art.

Susan Hiller, who abandoned a career in anthropology to become an artist, reveals the repressed and the unconscious in the everyday: her fascination with mystical, supernatural and paranormal manifestations in our culture forms the basis of several landmark installations such as Psi Girls, From Here to Eternity, and Witness.

This exhibition has grown out of our archival research on the Third Eye Centre and CCA. Focusing in particular on the 1980s, which in terms of the archive is often patchily documented, we decided to invite three artists who had shown at different times in that period to return to the building and to create a new exhibition. They will be showing a variety of older and more recent works, spanning subjects such as automatic writing, the unstable nature of memory, homages to past authors and the recollection of black musicians in UK history.

With thanks to Timothy Taylor Gallery, London; Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin; The Whitworth Art Gallery, The University of Manchester; Vistamare, Pescara and Summerhall, Edinburgh.

Screening times
Sonia Boyce and Ain Bailey, Oh Adelaide, 2010, Video work, 7'14"
CCA Cinema

Fri 7 February (preview night): 7pm - 9pm
Sat 8 February: 11am - 6pm
Tue 11 February: 11am - 2pm
Wed 12 February: 11am - 5pm
Wed 19 February: 11am - 6pm
Fri 21 February: 11am - 6pm
Sun 23 February: 12noon - 2pm and 4.30pm - 6pm
Wed 26 February: 11am - 6pm
Thu 27 February: 11am - 6pm
Fri 28 February: 11am - 6pm
Sat 1 March: 11am - 6pm
Sun 2 March: 12noon - 6pm
Tue 11 March: 11am - 5pm
Wed 12 March: 11am - 5pm
Tue 18 March: 11am - 5pm
Fri 21 March: 11am - 6pm