Entertainment · Books & Arts · 9 hrs ago
Prem Sahib’s exhibition explores queer spaces, intimacy and urban threat
English artist Prem Sahib’s exhibition Chamber is on at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill.
It brings together installations that turn familiar city objects and spaces into unsettling scenes.
An upside-down street lamp, trapped jackets and dissonant sounds create a sense of threat mixed with intimacy.
Queerness is central to the show, which includes doors from a Mile End leather bar that closed in 2022 and a fountain from a Shoreditch sauna that closed in 2016.
These objects point to intimate places that have disappeared from the city.
The exhibition also evokes the risks queer people face, including through a recording of a homophobic rant sent to Sahib online.
It asks what remains when important community spaces are destroyed, and who decides which places survive.
Prem Sahib’s exhibition Chamber at the De La Warr Pavilion explores queer spaces, intimacy and urban threat.
The show presents private spaces and urban settings as places where pleasure and danger can overlap.
Some works use objects from queer venues that have since closed, including a Mile End leather bar and Chariots sauna in Shoreditch.
The exhibition also includes a cracked mirror playing a slowed recording of a homophobic rant sent to Sahib on a gay chat room.
The Guardian review describes the show as minimalist and intense, while criticising some elements as too literal or ineffective.
- Who
- English artist Prem Sahib.
- What
- His exhibition Chamber explores queer spaces, intimacy and urban threat.
- When
- Not stated.
- Where
- De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill.
- Why
- The exhibition asks what happens when places important to people and communities are destroyed.
This story does not have two clearly opposing sides.
Chariots sauna in Shoreditch, from which a water fountain in the exhibition was taken, closed.
The Mile End leather bar that supplied the exhibition’s double doors closed.
Chamber was on show at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill.
- Artist
- Prem Sahib
- Exhibition
- Chamber
- Venue
- De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill
- Chariots sauna
- Closed in 2016
- Mile End leather bar
- Closed in 2022
What people are saying
Queerness is central to Sahib’s work.
That’s what Sahib does, over and over: he plays with the line between terror and pleasure, threat and intimacy, public and private.
Sources
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