26th April – 28th June
Opening Night 25th April 6-9pm
Two Queens is proud to present the first solo exhibition in the UK by artist and filmmaker Tom K Kemp – ‘Homunculus’.
The exhibition centers on ‘Crisis Acres’, a new film work that observes the development and execution of a resilience-testing megagame, in which a large group of local participants simulate the reorganization of an imaginary Midlands-based hospital.
The NHS, currently the largest healthcare organisation by workforce in world history, can be seen as a vast network of bodies and protocols ostensibly arranged to preserve its own basic unit – the human anatomy – which in turn impacts upon the vast network of microscopic bodies the anatomy contains. This is reflected in the megagame form, in which a collective of people reconstruct and model a complex, high-resolution scenario using the low-resolution tools of their bodies, their reasoning and simple sets of game mechanics. Like looking through a telescope and microscope simultaneously, the megagame collapses time and scale, providing an estranged perspective on systems of healthcare.
‘Crisis Acres’ builds on Kemp’s ongoing practice, which integrates roleplaying games and improvised storytelling systems into a pseudo-documentary filmmaking format. Non-actors—often selected for their professional expertise—portray versions of themselves within improbable and emergent fictional scenarios. Without clear context, introduction or exposition, the viewer must navigate the systems at work in the film, and the roles and identities of the performers, who engage with their paradoxical surroundings with conviction and uncanny naturalism.
Alongside ‘Crisis Acres’, Kemp has produced a series of sculptures with machinist Nathan Sherwood, which combine elements used in scale modelling, tabletop gaming and vivarium architecture into a new set of ambiguously purposed workstations.
The exhibition’s title ‘Homunculus’ (a fully formed miniature person, alchemically grown from human bodily fluids) points to Kemp’s interest in scale replicas, artificial systems and speculative simulations,which are employed alongside elements of roleplaying game design, animation and narrative filmmaking to parse the charms, perversities and repercussions of trying to make the world smaller and more governable. Splicing the Weird affect of the alchemical homunculus back into contemporary modelling and simulation, he asks what agency the subjects of a reduced reality might have to reshape their own conditions.
Tom K Kemp lives in Amsterdam and London.
Recent publications include ‘Dead Minutes’ and ‘Gackling Moon’ with Patrick Stuart.
Recent group exhibitions include ‘Weird Hope Engines’, the Bonnington Gallery, Nottingham, ‘Rehearsals for Reality’, osmo/za, Ljubljana, and ‘Occult Economics’, Huidenclub, Rotterdam. Tom has previously worked with the EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg and QUAD, Derby.
Residencies include Cité des Arts International, Paris, Triangle-Astérides, Marseille, and Rupert, Vilnius.
Tom is an alumni of School of the Damned class of 2017, and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, 2022-23
This project is made possible by public funding from The National Lottery through Arts Council England and the Mondriaan Fund in the Netherlands.
