#106: Lucy Beech

Lucy Beech presents a series of her works that explore the agency of reproductive relations; the commercialisation of feeling and experiences of the body as an alien place to be.

Selected works:

Reproductive Exile (2018, 4K video with 5.1 surround sound, 30 min) explores techniques of bodily control and entangled human and non-human bodily processes connected to reproductive technologies. From anonymous urine donors providing hormones purified from their bodily waste; to intended parents; their brokers and surrogate hosts, in Reproductive Exile the protagonist comes to terms with how her journey impacts and is impacted by an invisible community of different bodies.

Pharmakon (2016, 4K video with 5.1 surround sound, 20 min) focuses on health anxiety and self diagnosis in an era of mass communication whilst exploring the conflation between care and entrepreneurialism. The founder of the video’s central female community is part advocate for the network of displaced sufferers in search of legitimation and part entrepreneur in the business of the body.

Alongside her video works Lucy Beech will also show a selection of performance works staged for camera; produced with her long time collaborator Edward Thomasson. Often involving the live construction of sound, these performances are largely choreographic and consider what happens when language fails as a mode of communication and people are left to use their bodies collectively as a means of transformation. In Public Relations (2016, HD video with sound, 10 min) a male performer invites the other men to play out a fantasy of vulnerability; enacting violence on his body without touching it. 7 Year Itch (2015, 4 min) presents a group of performers working in pairs to collectively construct the sound-scape of a sex scene, conceived as a sex therapy workshop the couples build the imagined scene through movement and amplified sound.

Lucy Beech (b. 1985, United Kingdom) is currently undertaking a fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the history of Science, Berlin where she joins the working group ‘The Body of Animals’ throughout 2019. Forthcoming and recent exhibitions include; Extra City Kunsthalle, Antwerp; Peles Empire, Berlin, Thailand Biennial; Krabi, Thailand; Kunstverein Braunschweig; Tramway Glasgow; The De La Warr Pavilion Bexhill; Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (all 2018/19) Tate Britain, London (2017) and the Liverpool Biennial (2016). Beech has a collaborative performance practice with artist Edward Thomasson, together they were awarded the Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists 2016 and have exhibited in theatre and exhibition spaces including Maureen Paley, London, Camden Arts Centre, Frieze Live, London, Oxford Modern Art, Barbican Theatre, and The South London Gallery, London.