Published 4 SEP 2024

12 SEP and 13 SEP 2024
7:30 – 8:30 pm (Doors open 7 pm)

Cafe Theater Schalotte
Behaimstraße 22, 10585 Berlin

Tickets17,50 € (Seating is limited)

In the Berlin premiere of A Hole is a Hole, Lily McMenamy presents the construction of a female performer as a metamorphosing and multiplying vessel. Inhabiting a swarm of personae, McMenamy asks us who is subject to our aesthetic and erotic drives, when the relations between artist and model, monster and maker, are thrown into the blender of one singular body.

Part catharsis and part satire, this uproarious solo is a biting exploration of the identities and contradictions that live ‘rent free’ in the psyche, a surreal cast of internal voices vying for autonomy. Whether poignant flashback or freakish nightmare, our protagonist’s perilous trajectory crosses continents, embodying ingenue and muse while occupying a Pandora’s Box of egos, ghouls and grifters.

Via quickfire vignettes, McMenamy’s physical dexterity, sometimes poised and often reckless, adds a sense of abandon and clownishness to this high-octane melodrama. A mirrored backdrop creates infinite tableaus, evoking the carnivalesque or classic cinema as the studios, nightclubs and forests of the subconscious take the stage.

Lily McMenamy (she/her) is a model and theatre maker born in the US living in London. She holds a diploma in physical theatre from L‘École Jacques Lecoq and a Masters in Performance Making from Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work appropriates and transforms languages, archetypes, and gestures in order to disarticulate the performance of marketplace femininity and to celebrate the grotesque as a vehicle for freedom. McMenamy’s work has been presented at Cabinet Gallery, London (2021), and the Volksbühne Berlin where she was resident artist in 2018 amongst others. Her writings have been featured in CURA magazine and she is a regular contributor to Marfa Journal.

Music & Sound Design: felicita / Costume: Monique Fei / Movement Coach: Luis Odriozola / Vocal Coach: Deborah Hudson

Opening – 10 SEP 2024, 6-9 pm
10 SEP until 2 NOV 2024

During Berlin Art Week, Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi presents Bod Mellor’s first exhibition with the gallery titled People Who Knock on the Door. Mellor shows a new series of paintings that picture a number of prison workers performed by screen actors on British television. Not strict portraits, Mellor’s paintings symbolically rework images that represent the at once banal and omnipotent character of the carceral system, point to the mediation of the actor-camera-painter, and evoke “meet-the-team” staff photos we might see on noticeboards in state institutions. 

Bod Mellor (*1970), formerly Dawn Mellor, has had solo exhibitions at the Neuer Essener Kunstverein; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich; Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea; and Studio Voltaire, London. Their work has also been shown at Kunstverein Hamburger Bahnhof; Kunstverein Hamburg; Contemporary Art Centre Vilnius; Limerick City Art Gallery; Museum Arnhem; Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; MoMA P.S.1, New York; and Tate Liverpool.