For Practicing Concern, Underpinning has invited contributions from artists, writers and art workers based across the UK, Australia and the Netherlands who are connected through a web of support.

This exhibition will give attention to the often invisible gestures of help, care and validation shared between artists that extend beyond the professional veneer of an individual art practice. Considering peers who support and self organise for one another, who provide context and feedback, edit each others texts, document each others work, sleep on each others couches, hold each other’s hands and babies. This body of work will reflect on the ways in which work and friendship overlap, as a way of working outside of funded art world structures.

Practicing Concern draws upon Annabel Nicolson’s, Concerning Ourselves, a group exhibition from 1981 at the Norwich School of Art where she was in residence at the time. In hosting this exhibition Nicolson situated her work alongside six other female artists, as a way to demonstrate how women frequently group together, both within and outside of institutional structures to support each other’s work.

The exhibition will play host to an event on Saturday 19th October, which invites others to reflect on what and who is underpinning, enabling, holding and restraining their practices. Kirsty Russell and Laura Hindmarsh will expand on works within the exhibition to reflect on the ways that their own networks maintain and nurture practice, effectively working both collectively and remotely. Read more.