About:

Shift / Shape is a four-session participatory painting and drawing project that explores what happens when an artwork is passed from one person to another. Rather than beginning with a blank canvas, Sophie will create a large-scale, partially developed painting as a starting point, establishing a visual world of possible horizons, landscapes, abstract forms, animals, objects, lines and colour. Participants will be invited to enter and transform this existing image through a series of simple, playful prompts: add, extend, connect, repeat, obscure, transform and respond. 

Workshop dates: 

• Workshop 1 – Tuesday 3rd November, 10.30am-2pm
• Workshop 2 – Tuesday 10th November, 10.30am-2pm
• Workshop 3 – Tuesday 17th November, 10.30am-2pm
• Workshop 4 – Tuesday 24th November, 10.30am-2pm

To ensure fair access, please book only if you can attend all 4 sessions.

Time: 10.30am – 2pm (please aim to arrive 10-15 mins earlier)
Location: SPACE Ilford, 10 Oakfield Road, Ilford, IG1 1ZJ

Session 1 – November 3

In this first session, artist Sophie Knight will introduce a large-scale painting that she has already begun, filled with colours, shapes, lines, landscapes and mysterious forms. Rather than starting with a blank canvas, you’ll be invited to step into an artwork already in progress and help transform it. Through a series of playful prompts, you might extend a line, repeat a shape, add something unexpected or connect two parts of the painting. No previous painting experience is needed — the aim is to experiment, make marks and discover where a simple action can take you. Together, we’ll begin building a shared artwork that will continue to evolve throughout the project.

Session 2 – November 10

This session explores what happens when we respond to someone else’s ideas. Returning to the collaborative painting, you’ll be invited to work with marks and shapes created by other participants, rather than starting from scratch. You might repeat a form, transform an existing image, connect two areas or respond to a mark with one of your own. The painting will be passed between participants, allowing each person to build on, change and reinterpret what came before. Together, we’ll explore how an artwork can shift as different people contribute to it, and how individual ideas can become part of a much larger image.

Session 3 – November 17

By now, the painting will have developed through layers of different people’s ideas. In this session, we’ll explore how painting can involve not only adding, but also covering, obscuring and transforming what is already there. You’ll be encouraged to paint over parts of the image, reveal fragments, draw back into the surface and turn existing shapes into something unexpected. We’ll think about how an image changes when something is hidden, altered or seen in a new context. The painting will become increasingly layered and complex as we experiment with what can be changed, lost and discovered again.

Session 4 – November 24

In the final session, we’ll step back and look at the painting as a whole. After three sessions of adding, responding and transforming, we’ll consider what the artwork needs to bring its many layers together. You might connect two existing forms, make a busy area quieter, repeat an element or add one final unexpected mark. Sophie will also work directly into the painting, bringing together the different contributions and making final interventions to the composition. We’ll finish by looking at how the painting has changed from its original starting point and reflecting on the marks, ideas and encounters that have become part of the final collaborative artwork.

How to Book

Email: exhibitions@spacestudios.org.uk
Subject line: Shape/Shift Workshops

Please include:

• Full name
• Age
• Postcode
• Phone number
• Any health, medical or access needs
• Emergency contact / next of kin details

To ensure fair access, please book only if you can attend all 4 sessions.

Bio

Sophie Lourdes Knight (UK&USA) is a multidisciplinary artist born in California, USA. She studied at California College of the Arts (USA), graduating with a BFA in 2014, and at the Slade School of Fine Art (UK) graduating with an MFA in 2022. She is a co-curator of the RELAY Exhibition Series in Oakland, CA, and a 2019 & 2020 Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation awardee. Knight’s work attempts to disrupt the hierarchical economy of value within the world of objects. By placing overlooked, everyday items alongside spectacular things of beauty she establishes them as on a level plain; both objects are prescribed as having the same inherent value. They transcend their physical limitations and rise to become akin to religious idols or spiritual totems.