Meet the artists:
Outpost Studio

As part of his Age of Many Posts project, Associate Artist, Abbas Zahedi, created an open studio on Level G.

Outpost Studio was developed collaboratively with our Young Visual Arts Group and was a space for young artists to meet for regular workshops and feedback sessions with Zahedi. In collaboration with our Creative Learning and Cinema teams, and communities local to the Centre, Zahedi explored our ongoing ‘post-crisis’ world through conversations with multiple individuals, that revealed the exhibition, artists and artworks in new and exciting ways.

Outpost Studio was programmed in response to Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945-1965.

Meet the artists

Ioana Simion

Ioana Simion aka @artizineuk is a visual creative and arts facilitator based in London but originally from Romania. She collaborates with artists, galleries and not for profits to design inclusive art-making programmes for communities in need of new and creative avenues for inspiration.

Her socially engaged practice also involves developing collaborative learning approaches based on the process behind making, play and intuition.

Ioana collaborated with Karina Sellars on curating a programme of workshops and guided discussions part of Repair Studio, accompanying the re:Repair exhibition which took place on Level G of the Barbican 7–8 May 2022.

Repair Studio draws on the cultural conception of an artist studio and invites visitors to transform the space into a shared, collaborative and socially engaged public workroom. The Repair Studio explores the role of creativity in sustaining or creating the idea of repairability – the alternative and sustainable uses of objects and materials.

What similarities do you think there are between the postwar period and now?
Post-industrial attitudes, rich and active youth culture, interested in climate change and social justice.

What’s your view on the Outpost Studio?
I applaud Abbas’ initiative to build a space which fosters collaborative exchange between young artists from the Young Visual Arts Group and practicing practitioners outside the Barbican. I find the opportunity to witness art conversations and feel seen invaluable. I hope that in the future, there will be more of these spaces in institutions.

How’s it been working with Abbas?
I found it so refreshing to join one of Abbas’ sessions – it definitely helped me shape new ideas about my work. It’s amazing to meet someone so interested in platforming young emerging creatives!

Instagram: @artizineuk

Fikayo Adebajo

Fikayo Adebajo is a 22-year-old photographer and visual artist based in London and brought up in Lagos.  She is passionate about using visual mediums to present people of colour, especially black women, through a three-dimensional lens. She tells stories that explore the full spectrum of the black emotive experience, creating space for existence outside the narrow confines of the marginalisation that seeks to define.

Aside from the Young Visual Arts Group, she has worked with organisations including Tate Collective, The Photography Foundation and Moleskine Foundation.

Her current project ‘String Figures’ was born from a desire to tether in physical form the ineffable nature of the love and connection we extend for others and ourselves. An exercise in making space for others, each photograph was crafted from conversations centered in practices of care, and ultimately materialised through ‘speculative fabulations’ of string arrangements.

Outpost Studio is so important because it goes further than many institutional attempts to integrate young people into the arts by creating literal and figurative space for community and critical conversation. It’s so incredible to feel like we have a bit of the Barbican specially for us

Instagram: @fikayoadebajo

L U C I N E

L U C I N E is a transdisciplinary artist, mental health advocate, and creative facilitator who believes in using a cross-arts approach to create unique, immersive experiences for all people to enjoy and feel equal in. Their eclectic taste and multifaceted worldview enable them to create work that provides an alternate reality for those who experience it. It is their wish to continuously challenge perceptions of the human experience and encourage lifelong curiosity.

What similarities do you think there are between now and the postwar period?

I think there are many similarities between now and the postwar period: in an obvious sense we, I want to say came out of a pandemic, but also I guess the pandemic is still happening – the aftermath of that can be linked to the postwar period. We weren't exactly evacuated to safer towns, and we didn’t really have to go to war; but we did have to stay indoors and we did have to find ways of looking after ourselves in our community by physically separating from one another. And whilst it's been a while since the last lockdown, I think it's quite similar to the postwar period: we’ve had to readjust, we’ve had to find our ‘new normal’ and figure out what changes we were going to keep from the lockdown period, and what changes we were going to let go of when it was safe to revert back to how we once were. I think that’s probably the most obvious similarity.
Other similarities – how much time do you have? I think we're almost always following a war: there are multiple kinds of wars, but we're almost always following one, or in a period at the ‘end’ of one. Obviously, some of us will know the issues with Afghanistan, or Israel and Palestine, and so much happening all over the world. And those are physical, real-life wars that we know and understand to be wars. But there are also other wars: there's an internal war that we're probably all dealing with on a day-to-day basis. The decisions we make, the things we choose to do, the way we want to feel. There's an internal war with ourselves, whether that’s the authenticity of ourselves: who's going to win, the fake me or the real me, the healthy or the unhealthy me?
On a deeper, or more literal sense, one might consider mental health difficulties a war. That's a very serious internal struggle. So I think there are many similarities between now and the postwar period. That said, it can never be replicated. The postwar period was such a severe time: of repair, and reconfiguring, resetting. But not because of a specific illness that struck our entire population, not because of internal struggles, not because of marginalisation or racial issues – even though that was at the epicentre of World War Two – but because an entire force of human beings shed blood, and they shed it on an extremely large scale. In that sense, there are no similarities. Because although there are issues of genocide, none really equal what was seen during the two World Wars. And yet, there are still similarities and we're in a constant place of trying to get back to where we were. Except I kind of take issue with that, I feel like this idea of how we used to be, or going back to what it was: I think you never really can. Reverting back isn't as possible as it seems: we can try and we can work at it, but really, that's in my eyes energy and time wasted. What’s better is to create a new version. It can replicate, it can have similarity, it can have a likeness to what once was; but it never will be. And I think it's important to acknowledge that.
So returning to the pandemic, it’s a massive similarity. Things couldn't be the same after the wars, and things won't be able to be the same after this pandemic.

What's your view of Outpost Studio?

Simply put I think highly of it, I think it's a really great concept and one that's important for young artists like myself. I wish it was a space I’d had growing up, that's not to say I didn't have spaces in which to exist in this way, but they weren't as readily available or as authentically curated, with myself and people like me in mind. I think it's a really lovely initiative and I'm kind of upset that it might be coming to an end – I think that there needs to be a way to keep it alive, in some sense, in some fashion. It's been a really lovely space from my experience. I'm kind of frustrated that I haven't been able to utilise it as much as I would have wanted to, and in that sense, it makes me think of the flexibility of these spaces and how they are held to be truly inclusive for everyone. But all in all, I think it's a really cool concept. I'm glad it happened and I hope there'll be many, many more Outposts.

How’s it been working with Abbas?

Working with Abbas has been eye opening. I remember when he came in for his talk, it was just really enlightening. And not to be cliché, but a breath of fresh air. I think often with art, particularly I think visual art, it takes place in a sort of ‘traditional sense.’ There's a persona that some people adopt, or feel that they have to, and there's this culture that exists. And Abbas walked in and just dismantled it all. Just in his very presence. Which not only did I love and feel akin to, but was grateful for. I think I've always been someone who, not often intentionally, goes against the grain, and exists in a way that people don't want me to exist. I can't really help that, but I also don't really want to force myself to conform for no good reason. And it's so helpful being able to meet someone like him, who's just not concerned in that way, and exist to be themselves in the truest way possible, and don't hold this kind of weight above them to be this super profound, and learned, enigmatic – all the superlatives – up on a pedestal-type artist. Also not being from a typical background. I think that in itself has been so eye opening and has made me feel more comfortable with the decisions I make in my artistry, and the way that I approach my art and even just life in general. One of the things that stood out to me was him showing us the video of him smashing lemons. I mean, it's fascinating, isn't it, because you could take anything and literally give it this most profound reasoning, but really, it could just be someone chucking lemons at a wall or at the floor. Or it could also have deeper meaning. But either way, it's almost like that's imposed and I think he's really stressed how those impositions are not for you to hold, they're not for you to carry as if they were your own. People are always going to have something to say, and naturally, as humans, are going to be judgmental and come to their own conclusions. And really, that's okay, because we do the same when we experience other people's art, but more to the point, we can't expect everybody to get it. We also can't expect ourselves to create in this extremely wholesome sense, as though everything we make is this life defining, or world defining thing.
So working with Abbas, it's just been an incredible exploration and lots of fun. I really appreciate an artist who is further along in their journey wanting to not only let people get not only a foot in the door, but hold it open for them, wanting to bring people up with them. And it reminds me of a quote that I really loved hearing the first time I actually think I was in an artistic space when I was about eighteen – in terms of a professional artistic space. And someone said that ‘Wherever you are in your journey you always want someone in front of you and someone behind you’: so you can learn from the person in front of you and you can help the person behind you learn from you, and together you're holding one another along the way. And I think Abbas is a really great personification of that. I think he really paves the way for what a lot of people need to be doing, because there's a lot of talk for wanting to support, wanting to enrich the lives of young emerging talent; but the thing with Abbas is he did it and he's doing it. And he's not just doing it for the sake of it: he wants to, he's authentically there and he cares. I’ve had a great time with Abbas. It's been cool, Abbas is cool.

Instagram: @lisforlucine

Sally Barton

Sally Barton is an artist born in Sheffield, now based in London. Having graduated from Chelsea College of Arts in 2021, her practice explores her relationship to class, masculinity and industrial history. Fascinated by her family's stories of trade unions, strikes and class struggle, she uses a childlike aesthetic to explore her history and heritage through dreamlike photography, drawing, installation.

Sally is currently a member of the Associate Studio Programme (ACME), Barbican Young Visual Arts Group and is supporting the photographer Hannah Starkey in an upcoming commission for the Hepworth Gallery Wakefield.

Instagram: @bartonmade

J

I am a queer body and a queer mind, exploring intimacies, the ephemeral and relationality in regards to that body.

To document is to exist, and through the archiving of my own trans* experience I become. To write and rewrite the narrative through being and making, to grow, observe and reflect. To look amongst the queer bodies around me, listen and absorb and share, to be present, to be, to.

Through making I hope to fully realise my own experience as a trans* being: when I am queer, I am. My art is made up of fragments of acknowledgment, exploration and celebration of this.

Instagram: @fickle_dreams
Website: jjfrank.co.uk