Performance Lecture with Kialy Tihngang

Kialy Tihngang is at Southampton City Art Gallery on Saturday 3 October for a performance lecture that opens up the research behind her work, The Bluest Eye. It's a one-hour session, running from 2pm to 3pm, and it's free to attend, though there's an option to donate £3, £5, £7 or more on the day.

The lecture is part of The Avebury Papers, a four-year UKRI-funded project to digitise, explore and share the multimedia archive of Avebury's Neolithic origins. As part of that work, the project commissioned two artists, Gayle Chong Kwan and Kialy Tihngang, to respond to the archive. Tihngang's piece, The Bluest Eye, is the one this lecture follows, and it's on display at the Gallery from 13 June to 17 October, so you can see the work itself before or after the talk.

The Bluest Eye starts from the theory that Avebury's stone circles were built to commemorate the domestic dwelling of a group of early farmers who migrated to southern England some 5,800 years ago, crossing the channel and bringing skills that would enrich the country. Drawing on the circle and the ripple, and on the materiality of sediments and standing stones, Tihngang visualises the hopes, experiences and challenges encountered by new peoples and ideas arriving in Britain. The lecture expands on that research, using sound, images and video to go further into the ideas behind the work.

It's a free event, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, with the option to donate £3, £5, £7 or more. Booking is required, so you'll need to secure your spot in advance. The Gallery is on Commercial Road, Southampton, SO14 7LP, and the lecture runs from 2pm to 3pm on Saturday 3 October.