Exhibition Dates

Private view & performance
featuring Dom Bouffard and Paris Crossley
THURSDAY 4th JULY
6 – 9pm

[In]Practice – workshop led by ArtRefuge
Saturday 6th July
12:00 – 4pm

[In]Theory – panel discussion featuring
Christiana Spens and Pablo de Orellana
Wednesday 10th July
6:30 – 8pm

[In]Conversation: Artist Talk
Dom Bouffard in discussion with
Martin J Tickner, Stefan Lebenson and Tally de Orellana
Thursday 18th July
6.30 – 8pm

Tuesday – Saturday
12 – 6pm

CLOSED
Sunday / Monday

Dom Bouffard is an Anglo-French-Algerian artist and composer whose practice combines sound, sculpture, drawing, text, video  and performance.

His work delves into notions of Post-Memory and Inherited Trauma, while drawing deeply on his own family’s experiences as refugees from the Algerian War of Independence, and later as mercenaries in subsequent conflicts. Bouffard maps the ways in which traumatic experiences inform and reform across geographies and generations, and how the personal becomes the political. His research and experimental work range from large scale installations to the development of ‘sound drawing’, sonic hieroglyphs acting both as musical symbols and as a form of cathartic processing.

A self taught musician, in the early 2000’s he was a member of the UK alternative rock bands Sona Fariq and Queen Adreena, later working with Lou Reed, Rufus Wainwright and Coco Rosie. He has collaborated on numerous projects with legendary theatre artist Robert Wilson, including Flying – a video portrait of Lady Gaga which was exhibited in the Musйe du Louvre. His radio works have garnered critical acclaim, being shortlisted for the Karl Szcuka and Kriegsblinden prizes and his compositions have been performed by major interpreters including Ludi Quartet Kernow and Sergio Sorrentino. His drawings are currently in private collections throughout the UK, Europe and the US.

He holds an MMus in Music (Creative Practice) from Goldsmiths University of London.

BOBBY LLOYD
is a visual artist, art therapist and activist based in Hackney, east London who works both independently and collaboratively. Using diverse media, her art practice engages with people, communities and landscapes often in the throes of contestation or disruption, and aims to make visible the deep traces of place. She is also interested in ideas and socio-political themes that emerge out of these processes and in examining these both individually and collectively. She has worked on numerous projects and interventions in the public realm and has exhibited in galleries and  site-specific settings in the UK and internationally over three decades.

Through the privilege of extensive collaborations with other artists, Bobby has co-led two contemporary arts projects based in East London: On Site Arts (2004-12) and  the drawing shed (2010-18).

She has worked as artist-in-residence on two London development projects, working with architects, technicians and builders to site a number of significant public art works: St Andrews housing development in Bromley-by Bow (2007-14), and at Enderby Wharf (2018), site for telecommunications cable construction since the mid 1800’s. 

Alongside her art practice, Bobby is also an UK HCPC registered art therapist, writer, researcher and educator. 

Since the early 1990’s she has worked in NHS child and adolescent mental health, inner city schools and community settings both in the UK and internationally. Under  Art Therapy Initiative (ATI) set up in 1994, she co-led projects, consultation and training in contexts of political conflict and social upheaval. 

A trustee for 8 years of Art Refuge Bobby became its first CEO in 2016 and leads its freelance team of art therapists and artists in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of people who are displaced due to conflict, persecution, poverty and climate change, both in the UK and internationally. Through this work she has become increasingly interested in the roles of socially engaged art and art therapy in relation to displacement, community, crisis support and social justice.

JOSEPHINE CARTER is a poet, artist and community worker. Using found and devised text, she is interested in ‘reinscribing’ the act of writing. Through movement, erasure, improvisation, translation and manipulation, she produces poems highlighting the generative, collaborative and durational aspects of the craft, attempting to subvert the culturally-mandated dominance of the written word in English. 

Based in Folkestone, UK, Josie is an intent observer of the UK Government’s border regime as it manifests on the south-east coast of England. She works as a facilitator, convener and producer of socially-engaged and co-designed artworks with communities, including with displaced people living in East Kent. She has worked with Art Refuge on both sides of the Channel, in London, Folkestone, Calais and Paris. 

RAMAN FEIZ (b. 1989) is a photographer and filmmaker, born and raised in a small town in Kurdistan, Iran. From a young age he developed a strong sense of justice, as well as a deep understanding of the struggles of his people, leading him to work as a human rights activist, volunteering and campaigning with the International Association for Human Values amongst other organisations. Through activism, Raman slowly began to discover new possibilities for revealing truth through the language of film and photography. He undertook a BA degree in Photography & Cinema at Farhang Va Honar (Art & Culture) University in Tehran, and was an active member of the Iranian Youth Cinema Society.

From 2015-2018, Raman developed his most ambitious project, Life in War, a series of portraits made of civilians on the border of Iran and Iraq, who are victims to the countries’ politics. Travelling from city to village, to remote places inaccessible by car, he met, interviewed and photographed over 200 people who had lost their loved ones and livelihoods to war and landmines. The project culminated in a self published book of text and photographs, telling the stories of the 37 individuals from the villages and cities of Ilam, Kermanshah, Kurdistan and West Azerbaijan.

In 2018, Raman immigrated to the United Kingdom. In 2022, he was awarded The Gustav Metzger Foundation Scholarship in association with Hauser & Wirth Somerset. This support allowed him to undertake an MA in Arts and Place at Dartington Trust. In his work, he continues to use activism and art as one, to share a message beyond words, and to bring the vitality and spirit of his culture to all those who are touched by his work.

Inherited memory and intergenerational trauma are phenomena experienced by descendants of those having witnessed, suffered, or perpetrated extreme experiences; war, genocide, or abuse. In [Un]Reliable Witness Dom Bouffard draws on his own experience as the child of an Algerian War refugee to give shape to this post-memory. In an immersive entanglement of sculpture, drawing, video, and interactive sound installation, Bouffard creates a space in which to connect and reflect, while confronting the volatile relationship between the personal and the political in an era of global conflict.

Curated by Tally de Orellana, this exhibition has been generously funded by the British Arts Council and is accompanied by the following events, all free to the public.

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ART REFUGE

Art Refuge uses art and art therapy to support the mental health and well-being of people displaced due to conflict, persecution, poverty and climate emergency, in the UK and internationally.

Their ongoing programmes take place in the UK and France while being involved in shorter term projects, exhibitions and research in other settings. They also deliver tailor-made arts-based training, crisis support and skills-sharing workshops in the UK, Europe, internationally and online, and we welcome requests.