2025-03-31-accounts

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Programme Overview

In 2025, with the support of the Cockayne Foundation, Fluxus Art Projects, Phileus, Foyle Foundation. The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art, The Austrian Ministry for Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport, Henry Moore Foundation, Art Fund and Elephant Trust Cell Project Space delivered a critically engaged programme of exhibitions and research, combining international solo presentations, long-term historical inquiry, and structured public engagement. Across the year, Cell supported artists at pivotal stages, facilitated meaningful encounters between artists, curators, and writers, and extended its work beyond the gallery through research, pedagogy, and public programming.

Untamed Assemblies (Research-Led Public Programme) Untamed Assemblies launched a major research initiative examining under-researched histories of experimental fashion and contemporary art in Eastern Europe during the 1990s, with particular attention to UK cultural exchange. Focusing on the Untamed Fashion Assemblies in Riga and the Avantgarde Fashion Assemblies in Tbilisi, the project explored how informal, collaborative, and performative modes of production emerged during a period of geopolitical transition. Throughout 2025, the programme established its research foundations through interviews with original organisers, archival recovery and digitisation (VHS footage, press cuttings, photographs), and mapping of transnational networks in collaboration with the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art. This consolidated fragmented histories into a coherent account.

The public launch in March 2025 filled Cell Project Space to capacity, attracting professionals from contemporary art, fashion, and academia, including Pierre Bal-Blanc, Julia Gardener, Solvita Krese (Director, LCCA Riga), Sylvia Kouvali (Rodeo Gallery) , and researchers from the Courtauld Institute and London College of Fashion . The launch featured screenings, archival presentations, and a panel discussion with Bruno Birmanis, Phyllis Cohen , and Guus Beumer . Total audience across the first events reached 116.

A key outcome of Untamed Assemblies is its continuation into the 19th Venice Biennale , where Untamed Assembly: Backstage of Utopia will form the Latvian Pavilion in 2026 . The programme reached an estimated 150,000 users onlineand reinforced Cell’s role as a platform for long-term, research-driven inquiry into overlooked artistic histories.

Majd Abdel Hamid: Daydreamers

Daydreamers was the first London solo exhibition of Palestinian artist Majd Abdel Hamid, curated by Adomas Narkevičius (March–May 2025). The exhibition brought together long-term embroidery works and new commissions exploring slowness, labour, memory, and resistance, positioning textile practice as both method and metaphor for living and thinking beyond binary logics. The exhibition welcomed over 900 visitors and attracted curators, writers, and artists including Claude Adjil (Serpentine), Helena Reckitt, Tamara Chalabi, Angelina Radakovic (Mosaic Rooms), Ted Targett (Brunette Coleman) , and artists such as Mona Hatoum, Paul Noble, Georgina Starr, and Coumba Samba . A visit from Kunsthalle Basel highlighted the exhibition’s international significance.

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Public engagement included The Looms Workshop with Blackhorse Activators, led by Trainee Producers supported by Art Fund Varvara Uhlik and Sam Stewart. Participants aged 15–25 responded to the exhibition through embroidery and needlework, reflecting on time, slowness, and imaginative resistance. This translated Abdel Hamid’s methodology into a participatory, reflective practice.

A poignant highlight was the exhibition finissage with Paul Noble , presenting dot to dot (2006), his three-part sound poem originally voiced by Laetitia Sadier. Introduced by Noble through reflections on his first encounter with Hamid in Ramallah (2007), the event traced a poetic, intergenerational connection. Visitors were invited to take home over 600 sculptural elements from Daydreamers (Fortune Tellers), allowing the exhibition to continue through distributed afterlives. Daydreamers received notable editorial coverage, including a review feature in Canvas Magazine and Mousse Magazine and a listing in Art Monthly, and reached an estimated 150,000 online users, positioning Abdel Hamid’s practice within UK and international discourse.

Tanja Widmann & Johannes Porsch: Produced by –1, plus One

This exhibition marked the first UK solo presentation of Austrian artist Tanja Widmann, in collaboration with Johannes Porsch. Staged across Cell Project Space, including office infrastructure, the exhibition treated the gallery as a conceptual machine where subjectivity, authorship, and institutional power were continuously produced through feedback, delay, and repetition. Over ten weeks, it welcomed 437 visitors and drew attention from curators and writers including Alvin Li, Fiontan Moran, Dina Akhmadeeva (Tate Modern), Olivia Aherne (Chisenhale), Bianca Stoppani (Fondazione Between Art & Film), Alexander Leissle (ArtReview), Chris McCormack (Art Monthly), and Rahma Khazam , alongside artists including Merlin Carpenter, John Smith, and Jasper Marsalis .

The exhibition was extended through the workshop A Slow Roasted Subject, And A Lengthy Buffet, led by Goldsmiths alumni Frank Wates and Oli Mardon, with Trainee Producers Varvara Uhlik and Sam Stewart. Working with the Goldsmiths Art Writing Group , participants explored collective writing, repetition, and variation inspired by Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style. Resulting texts were installed throughout the gallery, creating a live feedback loop between artwork, writing, and audience.

Open for ten weeks, the exhibition welcomed 1,027 visitors and attracted professional attention from Nicole Yip (Spike Island), Amy Budd (MOMA Oxford), Alvin Li and Katrina Nzegwu (Tate Modern), Julia Gardener (Hot Wheels), and Ted Targett (Brunette Coleman) alongside internationally active artists, Gray Wielebinski, Michelle Williams Gamaker, Jack O’Brien, Michel Ho, and Nicole Cosen

Fortunate received strong editorial coverage, including an online review on e-flux, listings in Artforum and Art Monthly, selection for London Oomph during Frieze Week, and a full feature in Flash Art Magazine (Winter 2025) by Olivia Aherne, Curator Chisenhale Gallery , resulting directly from professional engagement during the exhibition. Estimated digital reach was 150,000 users.

Public programming included curator- and artist-led tours and an in-depth conversation between Mou and curator/writer Giulia Civardi, exploring migration, classification, cross-cultural encounters, and the influence of Renaissance painting, ornamentation, and alchemical thinking on Mou’s practice.

Overall Impact

In 2025, Cell Project Space welcomed over 3,400 in-person visitors, engaged hundreds of curators, writers, artists, students, and youth, and achieved extensive visibility through press, magazines, and online platforms. With invaluable support from our partners, the programme strengthened artists’ UK and international profiles, facilitated long-term research, and reaffirmed Cell as a platform for experimental, research-led contemporary art, linking exhibitions, workshops, and public dialogue into a cohesive and critically significant year-long programme.

The exhibition reached an estimated 150,000 online users through ArtReview, e-flux, and social media, consolidating Widmann’s presence in the UK context and demonstrating Cell’s commitment to reflective, institutionally aware practice.

Ruoru Mou: Fortunate

Fortunate presented entirely new works by Ruoru Mou, produced through complex automated kinetic systems, with elements created in the UK and shipped from Amsterdam. The project highlighted Cell’s expanded production capacity and its support for artists working at the intersection of material experimentation and international collaboration.

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Page Contents

Untamed Assemblies/ Event

Daydreamers , Majd Abdel Hamid, Solo Exhibition

–1, plus One, Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by , Exhibition

Fortunate , Ruoru Mou, Solo Exhibition

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Exhibition Report

Untamed Assemblies 1

Screening and Panel Discussion

`Untamed Assemblies 1`

`Screening and Panel Discussion`

`6.30pm Thursday 13th March`

Discussion, Screening and Archival Materials

Join us on Thursday, 13th March, at 6.30pm for the launch of Untamed Assemblies , a new research and public programme at Cell Project Space, exploring the under-recognised intersections between experimental fashion and visual art in the 1990s, with a focus on cultural exchanges between the UK and ‘Eastern’ Europe.

This inaugural event will bring together the initiator of Untamed Fashion Assemblies (UFA) , Bruno Birmanis, alongside original participants Phyllis Cohen and Guus Beumer. UFA was an annual carnivalesque festival that took place in Riga, Latvia, between 1990 and 1999, fusing alternative fashion, drag, and visual art. The evening will feature a screening, a panel discussion moderated by Cell’s Curator Adomas Narkevičius, and a presentation of archival materials, offering insights into the Assemblies’ spirit, their reception in both UK and Latvian media, and their broader cultural impact.

Fashion designer Bruno Birmanis will be joined by Guus Beumer, Founding Director (2013–2021) of Het Nieuwe Instituut and Temporary Fashion Museum (2015–2016), Rotterdam, and Phyllis Cohen, experimental make-up artist, illustrator, and Founder of Face Lace, London. Together, they will revisit the atmosphere and legacy of the Assemblies, reflecting on their non-commercial ethos and the intersections of experimental fashion, visual art, drag performance, anti-Soviet sentiment, and partying – erupting during rather than after the events’ themselves.

Untamed Assemblies continues Cell’s engagement with experimental artistic and cultural practices - emerging from ‘Eastern’ Europe, following the Queer Anti Colonial Solidarity Fundraiser Performance Night (2023) and CEED Feminisms programmes (2023–24). It also reflects on a moment of sociopolitical transition in the early 1990s, shaped by both euphoria and economic collapse in newly independent, decolonised countries such as Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Georgia. Against this backdrop, the Untamed Fashion Assemblies in Riga and, slightly later, the Avantgarde Fashion Assemblies in Tbilisi, emerged as singular interdisciplinary festivals incorporating alternative fashion, visual art, club culture, politics, and drag.

For a brief moment in the 1990s, radical young fashion in the region captured the international imagination – particularly that of the United Kingdom. Iconic sculptor and jeweller Andrew Logan brought his performances to Riga and Tbilisi, accompanied by BBC film crews. Designers Zandra Rhodes and Red or Dead’s Wayne Hemingway were among other notable participants, and in 1994, Paco Rabanne served as a jury member for the competition. A list of Central Saint Martins students in attendance suggests that Alexander McQueen may have witnessed the Assemblies firsthand. Pioneering feminist artist Eglė Rakauskaitė, who represented Lithuania at the 1999 Venice Biennale, presented wearable objects, while curator Raimundas Malašauskas, whose poetic,

ephemeral methods informed what is now known as New Institutionalism, modelled for designer Sandra Straukaitė at Vilnius’ UFA-inspired Fashion Infection . Meanwhile, in Georgia, the Assemblies helped shape the ethos and aesthetics of ‘anti-fashion’ – most recently brought to the global stage by Georgian designer Demna Gvasalia, artistic director of Balenciaga. The story of Untamed Fashion Assemblies – its impact on contemporary art, social change, and queer discourse in the region, as well as its latent influence on non-commercial and experimental fashion internationally – has yet to be fully explored.

Call for Archival Materials

Untamed Assemblies 1 also marks the start of year-long research into the Untamed Fashion Assemblies (Riga), Avantgarde Fashion Assemblies (Tbilisi), and broader cultural exchanges between ‘Eastern’ Europe and the United Kingdom at the intersection of art and fashion in the 1990s. If you participated in or contributed to these events, or hold archival material, please do not hesitate to get in touch: info [at] cellprojects [dot] org.

Bruno Birmanis is a designer whose work spans alternative fashion, wearable art, environmental and interior design. He is the founder and organiser of the experimental festival Untamed Fashion Assemblies (1990-1999) and has held the position of director for Vilnius Fashion Week and Moscow Fashion Week. Birmanis has also contributed to notable exhibitions and events such as ‘We Don’t Do This’, MO Museum, Vilnius; ’13 Women I (Still) Haven’t Married’, Latvian National Museum of Art, Rīga; ‘Ballet. Beyond.’, Putti Gallery and Riga Central Station, Riga. Additionally, he co-created ‘The Post-Banalism Ball’ in 1988, the first alternative fashion performance in the former USSR.

Guus Beumer was the Founding Director of Het Nieuwe Instituut (2013–2021) in Rotterdam, where he established the Temporary Fashion Museum (2015–2016). Previously, he directed Marres, Centre for Contemporary Culture, and Bureau Europa in Maastricht. He also led the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI). In the 1990s, Beumer worked in fashion with Alexander van Slobbe, co-developing the brands Orson + Bodil and SO. He was a founding member of De Zaak Nu, supporting art presentation institutions. He curated the Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale (2011) and was Commissioner of the Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2014). A regular contributor to Metropolis M, he recently founded Bruin, an initiative on waste wool.

Phyllis Cohen is a makeup artist, illustrator, and the founder of Face Lace. Her career spans several decades, during which she has collaborated with numerous iconic figures. Throughout the 1980s, she worked with renowned artists such as David Bowie, Annie Lennox, Tina Turner, and Janet Jackson. Her work appeared in prestigious publications like Vogue, Elle, and Vanity Fair. Her notable trompe-l’œil (optical illusion) makeup looks, producing three-dimensional effects on the skin, solidified her status as a pioneer in experimental makeup artistry.

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