Hello! It's cold now! Happy Fresher's Week! Enjoy!

This month I'm back and chatting with Sabrina Henry, a curator and costume designer based in Glasgow and Dumfries. We talked about furlough, collaborating with artist Alberta Whittle and working with Various Dance Artists (V/DA), particularly 'Sonic Seance', a performance and later exhibition at CCA. We discussed her work as a fashion stylist in London and Fashion Curator at Southbank Centre, and postcolonial fashion critique within her own practice as a costume designer and stylist.

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Sabrina Henry is a costume designer and curator based in Scotland whose practise uses research and collaboration, with artists of various disciplines, to connect pre-colonial traditions with the British experience as a way to re-imagine the future. Sabrina is currently researching performance and ritual traditions of the Black Atlantic as a way to re-remember diasporic identity in a contemporary context. She is interested in dance and movement as a method of non-verbal communication that connects universally and how costume can be used as the supporting character in performance practises.

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Things we talked about:

Alberta Whittle Frieze Artist Award https://www.frieze.com/article/alberta-whittle-wins-frieze-artist-award-2020

Last Stop Palenque with Hana Knizova https://nataal.com/last-stop-palenque

Fashion and Postcolonial Critique https://www.sternberg-press.com/product/fashion-and-postcolonial-critique/

Various Dance Artists http://www.variousdanceartists.co.uk/

Sonic Seance https://takemesomewhere.co.uk/sonic-seance http://www.cca-glasgow.com/programme/some-things-want-to-run-vda-sonic-seance-the-gathering

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Sabrina's full list of songs/poems/things of interest:

POEMS

Glimpses by Sarah Webster Fabio Just FIIIRRREEEE!!!

Girl by Jamaica Kincaid So funny because its so accurate, maybe its how close to home it is - either laugh or cry...

CLIPS

Singin' in the Rain This just cheers me up somehow, I love the narrative and how simple, funny, a little sexy and bittersweet it is. Also those MGM colours!

SONGS

Max Roach, It's Time I have sweet memories of driving through Cheddar Gorge listening to this as I moved the last of my things from London.

Motivation, Normani

Dragonball Durag, Thundercat I dont know if I like the song or his look and vibe in the video more, maybe its a perfect trinity! - is all a little Napoleon Dynamite blended somehow with Dave Chappelle doing Rick James when he mashes up that cream leather sofa!

Ahmad Jamal Trio, The Awakening album I lay on the ground listening to this the other night and started to fantasise about being part of some kind of MGM film dance chorus...

NoName, Bye Bye Baby Its just so sweet...

Shabaka and the Ancestors (ALL TBH!), They Who Must Die I haven't listened enough, but was on a compilation my boyfriend's brother made us as a gift and it was the one i was most drawn too...

Lets Go Crazy, Prince I like to sing the intro to this in particular :) "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing, called, life!" Also that album colour, the purple suit, the dark night street scene, the smoke from the motorbike bike, the smoke from Prince's 'aura'! all framed by the most delicate flowers ...ooooft!

Garret List, Your Own Self A gift from my friend Menelik.

Julius Eastman, Stay on It I remember listening to this for the first time walking down Peckham High Street to Nunhead Cemetery on possibly the hottest summer day of 2017... felt weirdly apt for the environment, at points stressful and sometimes transcendental.