In light of recent developments regarding COVID-19 we regret that we have taken the decision to postpone this event. We would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused, please see our website & social media for updates, these will also be shared via our mailing list.

Artist Beth Kettel will introduce each course of her Communal Lunch with short texts inspired by the ingredients used. The ingredients will inform costume and food vessel interventions which along with an accompanying soundtrack will set the scene for each course. 

Through an experimental writing practice Beth has recently been considering the interrelationships between species and environment, with explorations into nonverbal communication, consciousness and mental health of human, plants and animals. She usually borrows structural and stylistic devices from elsewhere, previously from sports, music videos and game shows. On this occasion she will borrow from recipes and dining experiences to build on a performative sharing.

With an interest in the flexibility and obscurity of language, gesture and objects Beth Kettel’s work manifests across costume, sound, voice and performance. Reflecting the simultaneity, porousness and strangeness of contemporary hybridity, along with the frameworks installed to supposedly protect and help us make sense of it. Often borrowing structural devices from popular culture to create multi layered performance, video and installation works. 

Beth Kettel (b.1988) was born in Leicester and is based in London and Nottingham, she is a studio holder at Primary. Recent commissions include: Baseline Drift, Art Night 2019, produced by Forma supported by ACE (2019); A Bang, A Bomb, A Lie and A Band at Stands For Something Else, a 30-minute video part of Art and Screen Network, ICA, London in partnership with Phoenix, Leicester (2018). Solo exhibitions include: The Mist of a Pessimist, ZC: Invites, London (2017); Viscoelastic Muted Contempt [soft applause], Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2016); II,I, Two Queens, Leicester (2016). Recent Group shows include: Full English, Curated Dateagle, Platform Southwark, London (2019); Mantel (curated by CACTUS), Copperfield Gallery, London (2018); Muscular Notions, Cob Gallery, London (2018); CCTV17, Caustic Coastal, Manchester (2017); Jerwood Staging Series, Jerwood Space, London (2016); Sorry About Last Night, It’s All Tropical, Art Sheffield (2016).

This project is part of Mansions of the Future’s Lincoln Live programme March – November 2020 (Season extended in response to COVID-19). Departing from Lincoln’s rich entertainment and theatre history, Lincoln Live features new commissions which exist at the intersections of disciplinary boundaries. The season is a celebration of performative ventures that stand resolutely marginal to both the history of English theatre and the often exclusive, disciplinary rhetoric of contemporary performance art.