Installation viewSam Jury and David Kefford 'test sites'16th March–7th April 2024
Recent events and projects
Mrs Fubbs Parlour ‘Because You Deserve It’
16th–23rd November 2024 Mrs Fubbs Parlour 'Because You Deserve It'
Mrs Fubbs Parlour is an artist collective staging playful, interactive events to disrupt. Their works encompass cutting and sticking, sculpture, electronics, performance, fashion and video, often blending these mediums in unexpected ways. Mrs Fubbs Parlour push the limits of good taste by employing the absurd, the surreal and the anarchic as forms of liberation from conventional norms. Acknowledging real-life chaos and anomaly, Mrs Fubbs Parlour light-heartedly challenge the simple messaging and easy-to-read imagery of advertising. Join them in celebrating the deviant body and challenging the status quo.
https://www.mrsfubbsparlour.com/
Events
Sat 16th November 7pm Opening party
Sat 23rd November 7pm
Closing party:
Including sound/movement performance and Pete UM DJ.
Opening times
12–5pm Sun 17th–Sat 23rd November 2024
Discover the Unconventional World of Mrs Fubbs Parlour.
Beloved congregation, gather round and lend your ears to a divine revelation! We invite you to embark on a sacred journey into the unconventional world of Mrs Fubbs Parlour. Join us at the hallowed halls of Q&C for the exalted exhibition, “Because You Deserve It.“
In this sanctified space, the renowned Mrs Fubbs Parlour, a prophet of modern art, unveils their latest testament. Known for their profound and iconic creations, Mrs Fubbs Parlour weaves together the sacred threads of advertising aesthetics and popular culture. They illuminate the intricate power dynamics of gender, class, consumerism, and capital, guiding us to deeper understanding.
This holy exhibition is a pilgrimage through a unique selection of installations, moving images, and interactive performances. Here, you will encounter a world of found imagery, objects, audio, and GIFs that challenge and captivate your spirit. Come, faithful ones, and discover the mysteries of Mrs Fubbs Middle Aisle—because you are worthy, because you deserve it. Amen.
bad timing: dushume + there are no birds here + tom daley
29th October 2024
bad timing: dushume + there are no birds here + tom daley
bad timing presents a night of noise and full frequencies, sonic experiments and inventions
Running order:
Doors: 6:45pm
Tom Daley: 7-7:30pm
Dushume: 7:40-8:15pm
there are no birds here: 8:40-9:15pm
open sound & noise session: 9:25-10pm (closes)
Curfew: 10pm
Dushume
His releases include ‘Disruptive Frequencies’ on nonclassical, alongside NikNak, Dhangsha and Poulomi Desai. His spatialised sound composition work was also diffused at West Road Concert Hall as part of electro//acoustic day, Cambridge Festival 2024.
there are no birds here
Tom Daley works on instruments where sound is the interface, performing with controlled feedback systems and signal processors. He is interested in taking performance outside of venues and is a member of the speaker spinning ensemble SOS. Based in Cambridge, he has recently performed at Iklectik and Hundred Years Gallery in London, sharing stages with the likes of Howlround and Marie Roux (O YAMA O). He was recently seen for bad timing at Quip & Curiosity studio supporting Kate Carr.
possible area site-specific performance interventions
11th October 2024 Ergo Phizmiz 'The Madonna of Bedminster'
“The Madonna of Bedminster”
A Film by Ergo Phizmiz and Friends
7–10pm
Free entry — all welcome
Please consider contributing to cover artists’ and event costs if you are able.
Advance Donation tickets: £5.50 / £11 including booking fees
https://wegottickets.com/event/634947
Bedminster, in the South of Bristol. Two Estate Agents search for a property they will never find. A woman encounters God at Garden Centre. There’s a little girl there, and there’s just something off about her. Amid the decline and decay of post-Brexit Britain, after 14 years of Conservatism, there are peculiar events beginning to occur. Did you see it?
Taking inspiration from the medieval “Mystery Play”, The Madonna of Bedminster is a plea for re-enchantment in this most disenchanted world. Yes, there is rubbish all over the streets, but did you see that funny light that just zipped past your head?
The first feature film from underground artist Ergo Phizmiz, who has been creating work across music, opera, theatre, visual art and radio for the past 23 years, The Madonna of Bedminster is set against the backdrop of the genocide in Gaza, and is narrated by the Palestinian poet and composer Shadi Zaqtan.
The original music in the film is by Samih Madhoun, recorded in the Gaza strip between October–May 2024. Samih’s music is complemented by an impeccable collection of 1920s rhumba and waltz, mechanical music, and music performed on an instrument called The Large Hadron Calliope.
The Madonna of Bedminster, created through highly unconventional processes with actors, improvisation, and the fine line between documentary and fiction, promises to be a unique cinematic experience that speaks directly of our deeply troubled times, but also of our dreams and our possibilities.
Ergo Phizmiz
Ergo Phizmiz is a composer, writer, theatre director & designer, collagist, pop songwriter, radio playwright, opera maker, and all-round entertainer. Their work, which exceeds four hundred hours, has been presented across stage, radio, television, concerts and galleries, including many acclaimed productions for BBC Radio 3, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Deutchlandradiokultur, Concertzender, Tate Modern, the Royal Festival Hall, BBC 6Music, The Wire magazine, Resonance FM, BBC Radio 1, Operadagen Rotterdam, Channel 4, and WFMU. Artists they have collaborated with include People Like Us, Goodiepal, Lukas Simonis, Gwilly Edmondez, Frankie Boyle, Christian Marclay, David Fenech, Frederic Wake-Walker, Bill Bankes-Jones, and Satanicpornocultshop.
The work of Ergo Phizmiz is characterised by restless change and playful toying with history, art, music, science, and the limits between creativity and charlatanism, copyrights and copywrongs, words and music.
https://www.instagram.com/ergophizmizplc
The Madonna of Bedminster * Starring Anne Jamieson, Ariadne Robertson, Elvis Herod, Mark Anthony Pearce, Joe Eaton, Laurence Tuck, Lottie Bowater, Goodiepal * Narrated by Shadi Zaqtan * Devised by Ergo Phizmiz with Elvis Herod & Lottie Bowater * Original music by Samih Madhoun * Photographed by Lottie Bowater & Elvis Herod * Macrophotography by Ergo Phizmiz * Additional voices by Autumn Robertson * Writing, MIse-En-Scene, Editing, Directing by Ergo Phizmiz * An AVANTHARDCOLLECTIVE production 2024.
Alex Vellis ‘The Boards of Theseus’
21st September–5th October 2024 Alex Vellis 'The Boards of Theseus'
The installation ‘The Boards of Theseus’ invites you to take part in the creation and presentation of poetry. It is designed to be an ever-changing work that encourages metamorphosis through the eyes of the viewer. It challenges people to engage with the work by replacing lines with their contributions, fostering a spirit of transformation and co-creation.
The work is a provocation against traditional ideas of authorship and aims to create a collective spiritual experience, connecting the poem with its participants.
Vellis’s exploration of poetry is driven by a study of connections between transitional and queer spaces, deep-sea environments, and non-linear forms of literature.
The constructed lines within the installation are intended to speak to a broad spectrum of individuals, aiming to provide something meaningful and resonant for everyone who engages with the work.
Open
Sat 5th Oct 12–5pm – closing day — final chance to see and interact with and contribute to the work
Events
Sat 21st Sept 2024 6–10pm Opening night. Come and see and contribute to the work and meet the artist. All welcome. Join Alex for an evening of drinks, discussion, and change.
Free. Book your place here.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-boards-of-theseus-tickets-1006251805237?aff=ebdsoporgprofile
Alex Vellis (they/them) is a Greek-British artist specialising in poetry and installation. They hold an MA in Creative Writing and are Open School East alum.
Vellis’ work questions liminality, ergodic literature, the benthic, identity, and place. Their latest book I Saw a Bird Once follows the lives of three people as they explore futilism in a working-class world.
Alex has performed nationally and internationally as a poet, on stages in cities such as Paris, London, Oxford, and Valetta. Their work as an artist both individually and as part of a collective has been displayed in Dunkirk, Canterbury, Margate, and Cambridge.
In addition to performance and installation work, Vellis delivers lectures at universities and festivals on events production, being a working-class artist, and poetry in the larger sphere.Their next book Where the Flowers Grow is set to be released in 2025 through Rebel Satori Press.
Alex works full-time as an artist, producer, and editor.
Jamie Ashman ‘The Museum’
31st August–14th September 2024 Jamie Ashman 'Athens & That'
Inspired by a recent holiday in Athens, this playful exhibition by Jamie Ashman includes original paintings, limited edition iPad prints, animations and a film by Pakana Curtis.
The artwork looks at Grecian culture and the influence it has had internationally, touching on mythology and Greek classicism. It explores ideas such as gender stereotyping, LGBTQIA+ issues and climate change — problems affecting the world now.
EVENTS
Fri 6th Sept 7-10pm: Opening event with music from Short & Sweet DJs and Goddesses on rollerskates. All welcome.
OPENING TIMES
Thu-Sat 12-5pm, or by appointment with the artist or Q&C
LIve music: Tues 20th August 2024
An evening of live improvised instrumental experimental music from UK improvisers
Ben Jones, saxophone
Josh Ison, saxophone
Dominic Lash, double bass
N.O. Moore, acoustic guitar
Dave Fowler, drums
Small group improvisations in differing configurations across the evening.
https://dominiclash.bandcamp.com/
https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/artists/no-moore/
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/perceive-react-josh-ison-f-ire-records-review-by-budd-kopman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGhVsSJoKQ0&t=38s
20th August 2024
Doors: 7:30, Music: 8–10pm
Suggested donation £5
(no-one turned away for lack of funds)
Quip & Curiosity, 71 Tenison Rd, Cambridge, CB1 2DG
BYOB
hidden channels / bad timing World Listening Day weekend 2024
27th-28th July 2024 World Listening Day
For this year’s annual World Listening Day, Bad Timing presents a weekend of events in its hidden channels series, focusing on different aspects of listening and recording of environmental sounds.
Saturday 27th July
5–7pm MUD Collective
‘our shared georhythms: bodies, scores, mixtures’
A durational performance installation based on field recordings relating to collecting soil and sediment from international locations as well as people’s recent encounters with these physical and sonic samples.
Drop in or bring a mat or cushion to stay for a longer experience
https://worldlisteningday.org/events/our-shared-georhythms-bodies-scores-mixtures/
Details
‘our shared georhythms: bodies, scores, mixtures’ is a durational performance installation based on a series of field recordings made while collecting soil samples across Cambridgeshire, Goa, and Basra, alongside documentation-based recordings made during recent ‘muddy workshop’ environments. These muddy workshops invited participants to seek to understand the role sound can play in encountering and sensing our ecological contexts: from flora and fauna, to soil and sediment.
‘What is presented this evening is a mixture of the original sound material, cut alongside recordings from the sonic umwelt of workshop; the bodies, mixtures, interactions, and space. Here, you are invited to listen, considering past activities, now held in sound, but redistributed as documentation that can be newly performed, encountered, and articulated. Low tones recall slow geological time, while small vibrational speakers are set around the space, holding vocalisations and commentaries from our geologist collaborators in Iraq and India.’
MUD Collective is a sedimentology–art–sound research group collaborating across Iraq, India, France, and the UK.
MUD Collective
Sunday 28th July
On Sunday join us for some ways to get involved in recording, listening and sharing environmental recordings.
4–5:15pm Soundwalk
Active listening and recording walk including Sonic Graffiti listening points originally commissioned by Bad Timing.
Meet at Quip & Curiosity. An alternative recording session will take place at Quip & Curiosity in case of bad weather.
Optional: Bring a sound recorder, microphones and headphones if you have them.
Free but please book here
5:30–7pm Listening session
Bring your own field recordings to share, including environmental sounds captured via video. We will also play back recordings made on today’s soundwalk.
As part of a new series of hidden channels listening sessions in Cambridge.
At Quip & Curiosity
All events are free, but donations are appreciated to cover basic costs
Tamsin Morse & Jo Chate ‘Outliers’ 15th June–6th July 2024
15th June–6th July 2024 Tamsin Morse & Jo Chate 'Outliers'
Extended until Sat 6th July.
Outliers is a two-person show that presents recent paintings by Jo Chate and Tamsin Morse in Q & C (Quip and Curiosity) Gallery, Cambridge. Showing together for the first time as a complimentary pair, they describe themselves as ‘outliers’, standing at the gate of the contemporary art world but feeling detached from it. Whilst being mothers, they are still artists. And yet, it is precisely as women, that they have a deeper understanding of its prejudice against women artists. Like the characters from French Novelist Camus in The Outsider, they are watched with strange eyes in a noisy club and seen as reckless intruders who do not conform. Not only as women but also as humans who have lived multiple identities, Jo and Tamsin are questioning conformity as outsiders with their strengthened souls hardened by accumulated life experience.
Events
Fri 14th June: Private view 6–9pm. All welcome.
Fri 28th June: Artists interview with Jennifer Thatcher, 4:30pm
Kate Carr at Cafe Oto by Naomi Morlan
Event
Sat 29th June:
bad timing: Kate Carr
Kate Carr is a sound artist whose work explores the textures and technologies of field recording using movement, objects and experimental recording techniques. She works across composition, performance and installation.
Her live work is centred on objects, chance events and textures, with instruments ranging from massage guns, bird horns, watering cans and bubble wrap to build shifting and hybrid soundscapes. She has performed throughout the UK and Europe, with notable performances at the Barbican, Tate Modern and Whitechapel Gallery in London, Supernormal Festival and Instants Chavires (Paris) AB Salon (Brussels) and Kraftwerk (Berlin).
She also runs the label Flaming Pines and is a member of Rubbish Music (with Iain Chambers, also of Langham Research).
“Probably the most significant field recordist of contemporary urban Britain…” – The Quietus
Tom Daley works on instruments where sound is the interface, performing with controlled feedback systems and signal processors. He is interested in taking performance outside of venues and is a member of the speaker spinning ensemble SOS. Based in Cambridge, he has recently performed at Iklectik and Hundred Years Gallery in London, sharing stages with the likes of Howlround and Marie Roux (O YAMA O).
possible area creates site-specific live improv sets and projects in sound using objects, texture, resonance and feedback. Based in Cambridge, recent activities have included site-specific sound installations in Cambridge and Waterbeach Barracks. Solo and group improv performances include recent appearances alongside Steve Beresford, Rory Salter, Dominic Lash among others.
https://linktr.ee/possiblearea
Q&C studio
Saturday 29th June, 8–10pm
Organised by bad timing — Cambridge’s experimental music, sound and art event organisers
LIve music: Phil MFU 'Fictitious Music' + Pete UM, Fri 7th June 2024
Phil MFU ‘Fictitious Music’
Inspired by the retro cosmic sounds of 70s library and Karlheinz Stockhausen with the idiosyncrasies of slanted outsider rock. Phil MFU has played and recorded with Broadcast, Faust, Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab), and many others as well as being keyboardist for Vanishing Twin on their first three albums.
Returning to Cambridge for his first solo appearance here in many years, ‘Fictitious Music’ is a brand new show AV created for Quip & Curiosity artspace, exploring the space and time across his expansive catalogue, fictional, factual, traversing outer rock to sublime electronics. With contributions from Laetitia Sadier and more.
https://www.instagram.com/philmfu/
https://manfromuranus.bandcamp.com/album/hot-space
Pete UM
“A master of the miniature electro-acoustic song-poem, a form he has more or less invented and crystallised himself, his work displays a sardonic wit combined with a healthy misanthropy, in marvellous micro-collages of voice, instruments, samples, and electronics.”
-Ergo Phizmiz
https://peteum.bandcamp.com/music
Robert Good 'They Live. We Sleep', 18th May–2nd June 2024
Robert Good ‘They Live. We Sleep’
curated by Lizz Brady
May 18th–June 2nd 2024
They Live. We Sleep is an exhibition of new work by Cambridge artist Robert Good, curated by Lizz Brady, that explores the impact of technology on our lives.
The catalyst for this exhibition was a research visit by Good to Silicon Valley in 2022, funded by Arts Council England, to search for the home of the internet. A serendipitous encounter with an arts collective called The School of Visual Philosophy, where the emphasis was on craft and tradition through skills such as letterpress and metalworking, led Good to a reappraisal of our relationship to technology and a desire to deconstruct and contextualise it. The title and artwork reference the cult 1988 sci-fi classic They Live.
Robert Good is an artist based in Cambridge whose work explores the migration of knowledge from analogue to digital and the impact of technology on our lives.
www.robertgood.co.uk
Lizz Brady is a curator and artist based in the North West, using lived experience of mental illness to curate progressive visual art exhibitions. Lizz pushes the boundaries of artistic ‘communication and expression, creating experimental, ambitious spaces within galleries.
www.lizzbrady.com
Jo Miller ‘Here & Now’ (2018)
A new space for Cambridge
Quip & Curiosity is a new contemporary art space in Cambridge City Centre that supports regional, national and international contemporary artists through a curated and artist-led exhibition and events programme.
The space will host projects that reflect its core interests in cross-disciplinary practice. It aims to facilitate opportunities, develop programmes that foster a collaborative and inclusive atmosphere and create an open network for creatives in the region and afar.
The property, maintained by the multi-media artist and musician Taren McCallan-Moore, was built in 1860. After many years as a dairy, science lab, recording studio and a home for many years to postgraduates, Quip & Curiosity established itself as a business in 1982, the collaboration of Paula McCallan-Moore and the late Graeme Grant Bruce, selling antique curios and contemporary lighting. The space had its first taste of life as an exhibition space during the late eighties. It was hosted by Paula McCallan-Moore, giving voice to Cambridge artists spanning textiles, sculpture and conventional visual art practice.
Please note: 71 Tenison Road is a private address; visitors are personal guests of the proprietors.