Changing Room Gallery presents 'RES. 004' featuring Bokani Tshidzu and Emmely Elgersma. The Fourth in our residency’s series, we took over old Victorian boys playground located on the roof top of a soho school. The space presented new challenges, as it was our first outside space, and pushed the artists to the max overcoming weather conditions and timescales.

Elgersma’s work greatly played with notions of functionality, futility and how both relate to sculpture by creating paper-mache objects. The objects that Elgersma made were typically hard-wearing items and her chosen technique called into question the durability, and consequently the necessity, of such things.

Tshidzu used the opportunity to take her work to a larger scale, creating a greenhouse made entirely of painting panels. She uses her practice to contemplate our responses to the climate crisis and her bold use of colour and texture became a beacon of optimism against the grey of the original building. 

The residency was a haze of brilliant chaos, and constant adapting - to the weather and the spaces, but also each other. Each artist usually worked alone in their studio, so it was interesting to start to see common thematic ideas emerging from the residency, which were evident in their open studio works. Both decided to take the opportunity to make work that they hadn’t been able to before, utilising the scale of the location, and freedom of materials due to the outside nature of the space.