BUILDHOLLYWOOD presents 'A Brighton billboard takeover' by artist HELEN CAMMOCK inspired by ‘All About Love’ by bell hooks. Billboard and advertising spaces across Brighton and Hove will be taken over by Turner Prize-winning artist HELEN CAMMOCK for one weekend in August as part of BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s first major curatorial and artist commission, ‘All About Love’.

Originally planned to coincide with the opening of a major outdoor commission by Cammock for the recently closed Brighton Centre for Contemporary Art, the deepest crease in the folds of stone and the sweet taste of salt (2023) has morphed from an ode to Brighton and its many folds, into a plea and a challenge to its institutions to support and nurture the contemporary visual arts in a more structured, sustained and existential way.

Launching on Brighton Pride weekend, this new commission, part of BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s All About Love project, features bold coloured artworks and fragments of poetic text. The work invites the audience to contemplate the power of creativity, asking questions about what we value and urging Brighton to preserve its vibrant habitat of ideas. The site-specific works will be taking over billboards and advertising spaces across the city, at locations including Lewes Road, Elm Grove, Spring Gardens, Seven Dials, Surrey Street, Portland Road amongst others.

Using the launch as an opportunity to platform important conversations about what it means to value art - as a practice and as a cultural context - a special panel discussion will be held on the evening of Wednesday 2nd August at Phoenix Art Space. The event will bring together artist Helen Cammock and former director of Brighton CCA, Ben Roberts, as well as executive director of Phoenix Art Space Lucy Day, in conversation with author and The Art Newspaper journalist Anny Shaw.

BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s ‘All About Love’ project is taking place across five UK cities between April - September 2023. Championing artists who are either born in those cities or live and work there, the project presents their work on billboards and advertising spaces in the heart of city centres, with the commissions all taking inspiration from All About Love, the groundbreaking book, published in 2000, by cultural critic, feminist theorist and author, bell hooks. The project is curated by Zarina Rossheart.

Artist Helen Cammock said: “At this critical moment as the arts and arts education are being so aggressively undermined across the country, this takeover attempts to ask us why we don’t value the space created within art for thought and the generation of ideas and why society can’t acknowledge the transformative activation that art can offer us. Art is full of stories and enquiry that use form and often complex aesthetic strategies to ask us to both think and feel - and sometimes to act. This project isn’t closed behind gallery walls and I love the idea that people may happen upon the works in their everyday activity.”

Curator Zarina Rossheart said: “To bell hooks, art-making was the act of resistance; a way of decolonising the mind and imagination. She was a firm believer that art nurtures the spirit and provides ways of rethinking and healing from wounds inflicted by oppressive systems. In her newly commissioned series of works for the 'All About Love’ project, titled the deepest crease in the folds of stone and the sweet taste of salt (2023), Helen Cammock brings our attention to the transformative power of creativity, the value of critical thinking and generating new ideas, and the freedom that these acts hold. I am honoured to facilitate the presentation of this billboard takeover to the audience in Brighton specifically at the time when the visual arts sector in the city and across the UK is under threat.”

LOVE | APRIL - SEPTEMBER 2023

‘All About Love’ is part of BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s ongoing Your Space Or Mine initiative, which gives artists and creatives across the UK a unique platform to present their work outdoors and connect with communities across our cities. The idea behind Your Space Or Mine is not only to support the creative community, but to also use street space as an intervention to inspire and energise local neighbourhoods.




The point of departure for this newly-launching commission was a quote from All About Love, the groundbreaking book, published in 2000, by cultural critic, feminist theorist and author bell hooks:

‘Whether it is the ongoing worldwide presence of violence expressed by the persistence of the man-made war, hunger and starvation, the day-to-day reality of violence, the presence of life-threatening diseases that cause the unexpected deaths of friends, comrades, and loved ones, there is much that brings everyone to the brink of despair. Knowing love or the hope of knowing love is the anchor that keeps us from falling into the sea of despair.’

Sacred, redemptive and healing - the ‘All About Love’ project uses hooks’ writing as a starting point, inspiring audiences to create a better future together.

HELEN CAMMOCK

Helen Cammock has been a resident of Brighton since 1989. Her works often cut across time and geography, layering multiple voices as she investigates the cyclical nature of histories in her visual and aural assemblages.

Through film, photography, print, text, song and performance, Cammock examines mainstream historical and contemporary narratives about Blackness, womanhood, oppression and resistance, wealth and power, poverty and vulnerability, throughout her practice.

In 2017, Cammock won the Max Mara Art Prize for Women and in 2019 was the joint recipient of The Turner Prize. She has exhibited and performed worldwide with recent and current solo shows including They Call it Idlewild, Oakville Galleries, Ontario, Canada (2023); I Will Keep My Soul, Art + Practice, Los Angeles, USA, (2023); Behind The Eye Is The Promise Of Rain, Kestner Gesellshaft, Hannover, Germany (2022); Concrete Feathers and Porcelain Tacks, The Photographer’s Gallery, London, UK (2021), Beneath the Surface of Skin; STUK Art Centre, Leuven, Belgium (2021); Che Si Può Fare (What Can be Done), Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2019), Che Si Può Fare, Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy (2019) and The Long Note, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland (2019); VOID, Derry, Northern Ireland (2018). Group shows include Breathing, Hamburger Kuntshalle, Hamburg, Germany (2022) and Radio Ballads, Serpentine Galleries, London, UK (2022). She has an upcoming solo show at Amant, New York, March 2023 and a new book with Siglio Press and rivers Institute in April 2023 called I Will Keep My Soul. She is represented by Kate MacGarry, London.

ZARINA ROSSHEART

Zarina Rossheart is an independent curator and producer based in London. Previous public art projects include: ‘Art Night London’ and Mayor’s Office ‘London Women’ produced by BUILDHOLLYWOOD.

BUILDHOLLYWOOD
All About Love
HELEN CAMMOCK - BRIGHTON | 3-6 AUGUST
ASMAA JAMA - BRISTOL | 8-10 SEPTEMBER