This collaborative exhibition by Immanuel Adelowo, Donald Fasanya, Nicky Harris, James Heath, Charlotte Maclean and Ibrahim Okeyere Keelson, who have been working together at ActionSpace’s South London studio at Studio Voltaire.
Orchestrated by Adelowo, the artists have worked collectively to explore the space as an otherworldly cave for the audience to engage. The space is conceived as a labyrinth, using draped fabrics and painted wallpaper as dark, strange backdrops within which individual artworks play characters telling stories of superhero lairs, wild animals and mystical ceremonies.
Into the Bliss grew from themes central to Adelowo and Heath’s practices, including storytelling and destinations, their own travels, global histories and imagined sites. Each artist has responded through painting, sculpture and sound to build an immersive environment.
Fasanya’s paintings and drawings explore natural and human worlds, combining figuration with subtle elements of the magical, whilst Harris’ portraits of superheroes envisage the exhibition's themes through cultural references such as Batman's cave or Superman's fortress of solitude. Keelson and Maclean’s abstract paintings and floating forms evoke crystals within rock formations, dripping water, skies and landscapes. Sound design and assemblages by Heath add further multisensory layers to the space, mining imagery of ships, flashing lights and deep woods. The environment functions as an interconnected ecosystem, where the boundaries between individual practices dissolve into a shared sensory world.
