Croydon’s Exquisite Corpse: collaborative monster drawing

Sat 2 Oct 12 – 4:45pm

Our visions for the future are increasingly being tamed and encased in pretty shopping malls and shiny offices, but what if we want to smash these boxes and build a big gorgeous beastly cave for all our unruly selves?

Now is the time of monsters! As part of our experimental collaborative project Propagate This – which brings together 6 Croydon artists to unpick Croydon’s problems and solutions – join artist Pear Nuallak in a giant ‘exquisite corpse’ game to create a Beast of Croydon.

We’ll explore how we can use what we already have – just some basic materials and our imagination – to constantly redefine ourselves and our communities.

What is an Exquisite Corpse game?

An exquisite corpse is a method of collectively assembling a combination of images to make up a whole – a Beast of Croydon made up of many parts… Each collaborator adds to the image one after the other in sequence, only being allowed to see the end of what the previous person contributed, secretly connecting drawings to unfold as a whole at the end.

What can I expect?

12:00 – 14:00 – Exquisite Corpse!! First we’ll ponder on what the beast might represent, then we’ll create the Beast and its Croydon home(s) through playing around in the space with materials, making more drawings, sculpture, writing, photos / videos. Each person gets 5 – 10 minutes each, depending on how many people there are.
14:00 – 16:00 – Unfolding and admiring the Beast of Croydon, building its character and world, making / drawing further responses, documenting / playing. This can happen as we feel like it – some people may want to work on their own ideas in the quiet area, other people may want to stay in the workshop area and work with Pear / their friends, some people will sculpt, others will write, take photos, or just vibe.
16:00 – 16:45 – We all come back into the space, tidy up a bit, and put what we’ve made together. Then we’ll admire our Beast and chat about how it embodies Croydon.

This is an afternoon-long workshop; please do bring lunch or snacks along with you! There’ll be opportunities for break and rest, or to drop in and out too.

Who can join?

All ages and levels of creative experience are welcome (not just for Fancy Fartists).

How do our tickets work?

For our workshops & events we offer the majority of tickets free and then offer donations-based tickets after that. Free tickets go fast! We’d encourage you to book a donations-based ticket if you’re able to, to leave as many free tickets as possible available for those who could most benefit from them. Donations tickets can be as little as £1.

About Pear Nuallak

I respond to this overwhelming world by making the natural into the strange and the strange into the natural. This can take the form of knitting funny creatures, drawing cartoons, embroidering toile de jouy, writing speculative fiction, or wandering the woods.
This wide-ranging practise is vital to feeling out all the conundrums, contradictions, and problems that arise as I experience life on this naughty earth. Most of my questions are focused on my relationship to the land on which I live, including Croydon, where I spent the first two-thirds of my life. My questions are slowly answered through this making / dreaming / wandering process, as well as more traditional academic research into the history of the land, materials, and social relations.
Making things, real or imagined, helps me think of how we can unmake the violent, extractive relationships that structure our world. Moving fluidly between art and craft, “high” culture and “low” culture, the historical and the imaginative helps people find my work. The embedding of art within community and the importance of material as the basis for coalitional struggle and fabulous textiles are my guiding principles for art and revolution.
@pearpiesyrup