IceBlink Luck

I'm seeming to be glad a lot I'm happy again, caught, caught in time Expose the doubt and arm yourself well Me, I defend with sober heart IceBlink Luck (1990) by Cocteau Twins IceBlink Luck is an exhibition that brings together works by artists Rebecca Halliwell-Sutton, Louise Oates and Léa Porré, curated by Kollektiv Collective. Laying bare distinctive temporal loops, it maps human environmental imprints across time, addressing the inaccuracy of a simplistic reading of time as linear. Within the slowly unfolding climate catastrophe, IceBlink Luck resorts to the tradition of science fiction, leaning on the genre’s potential to reconcile past, present and future, ultimately in attempts to grapple with the unknown. Reimagining the space of Generation & Display as the surface of a distant planet haunted by memories, or hallucinations, of a human past, IceBlink Luck dissolves temporalities, entwining future relics with historic novelties. In so doing, the exhibition visualises the malleability of time. In a 2011 article Ursula K. Le Guin noted that she “learned a lot from reading the ever-subversive Virginia Woolf.” She recalls reading Orlando at the age of 17, and her fascination with the feeling of “the marvellous strangeness of that moment five hundred years ago – the authentic thrill of being taken absolutely elsewhere.” In search of this feeling, the exhibition aims to confront the now by envisioning an alien future inhabited by fragments of the familiar. In it, Rebecca Halliwell-Sutton’s work loops in perpetual movement, reverberating cyclically through time and memory; Louise Oates’ sculptures resemble archaeological sites unearthing extraterrestrial traces within the permafrost; and Léa Porré’s transhistorical artefacts shine like a dream of our home planet, skewed in light-years, gothism now digital, the old echoing the new. The interplay of visual languages signifies layered temporalities and alludes to the dissonance between a revived Romantic longing for reconciliation with “nature” and the contemporary looming threat of ecological collapse. In the context of this anxious spiral, much of current ecological theory invites us to shift the emphasis to the emotive and sensorial posthumanism, pushing for a reevaluation of much-rehearsed notions of enlightened deduction, hierarchy and linearity. Feeling through layers of ecological exploitation, Timothy Morton exclaims “the only way out is through”, inviting the audience to delve deeper into the looped mess that is the climate catastrophe. To imagine such a way – one beyond the ever-anthropomorphising gaze – we revert to the tools of sci-fi to decenter what we think we know; to propose that to stop fearing, we are to become familiar with the unknown – and to defend with sober heart. Biographies Kollektiv Collective is a London-based curatorial collective co-founded by Pia Zeitzen and Sasha Shevchenko in 2019. Kollektiv focuses on exploring site-specificity and performativity as curatorial tools to transcribe the abstract into the visual. Thematically, their exhibitions are dedicated to analysing socio-political themes at large by dissecting thoughts and feelings that forge the image of present time. Critically investigating contemporary thought, Kollektiv reverts to a dissection of binaries in an attempt to promote multiplicity, complexity and the merit of leaning into uncertainty. Previous London exhibitions were held at DES BAINS; General Assembly (both 2024); Tabula Rasa Gallery (2023-24); Guts Gallery Project Space; Kupfer (both 2023); Christie’s (2022), and Swiss Church (2020). Rebecca Halliwell-Sutton (b. 1991, Bolton) is a Manchester-based artist working across sculpture, photography, writing and curating. Emphasising the transformative and alchemical properties of materials, Rebecca Halliwell-Sutton's practice is grounded in a queer feminist critique of land ownership, bodies, and desires. Through the lens of non-linear and intergenerational time, loops and cycles find their way into Halliwell-Sutton's work, dissolving its meaning within the process, and seeing how sculpture can embody and invoke feeling. Previous exhibitions include Recent Activity (solo, Birmingham, 2024); Collective Ending x Slugtown (London, 2024); Schtager & Sch; NightCafe; Union Pacific (all London, 2023); The Shop, Sadie Coles HQ (London, 2019); Selfridges (Manchester, 2019); and Gallery North (solo, Newcastle, 2017), among others. Louise Oates (b. 1987, London) lives and works in London, with a practice dedicated to sculpture and photography. Oates’s research-led practice entwines industries, bodies, and planetary processes, whereby metabolisms coalesce into material narratives. Utilising aesthetics of archives, displays, and archaeological tools of measure to imbue a notion of authoritative knowledge, she continuously investigates the space between chaos and stasis, gesturing towards a reevaluation of human centrism and awaiting a reassembly in light of a new categorisation. Her work was previously exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 2023-25); The Crypt Gallery (London, 2023 & 2022); Xxijra Hii (London, 2022), Saatchi Gallery (London, 2021 & 2020); Gossamer Fog (London, 2021); The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (2021); Ryerson Image Centre (Toronto, 2020); The Polygon Gallery (Vancouver, 2019); California Museum of Photography (2018); Whitechapel Gallery (2017) and the 57th Venice Biennale (2017), among others. Léa Porré (b. 1996, Paris) is a French and Belgian artist based in London, whose research-led practice investigates cyclical time through the interrelations of memory, history and myth. Deep-mapping historical and sacred sites, she re-imagines them through 3D-worldbuilding, saturated with impossible encounters and transhistorical visions. Porré’s physical/in-situ works – that span across video, installation, sculpture and framed painting – take place as mnemonic installations, where her labyrinthian sets are reminiscent of video game quests, in a constant interplay of the digital and the physical realms. Previous exhibitions include Patara Gallery (solo, Tbilisi, 2024); Mykolas Zilinskas Art Museum (Kaunas, 2024); Bob Bickell-Knight; Southway Studio (both London, 2024); Pavillon Southway (solo, Marseille, 2023); COB Gallery (London, 2023); Paradise Row Projects (London, 2022); Centre d'art de la Cité radieuse de Marseille (Marseille, 2022); Centre Pompidou; Fondation Brownstone (both Paris, 2022); and Tate Modern (2017 & 2018, London), among others.