Artwork

J Neve Harrington is a London-based artist who works with movement, conversation and visual design. Neve’s practice is mainly an exploration of relationships - “whether that is visitors getting involved in a conversation or a physical set of movements.” She often collaborates with performers to create performances based on experiences of time, intergenerational dialogue, neurodivergence and sensation.

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Neve has been practising as an artist for ten years and has shown her work extensively in the UK, as well as in Norway, Sweden and Germany.  Having trained in dance at Trinity Laban, she went on to study art at Camberwell College of Arts where she began exploring modes of embodied cognition, interactivity and dramaturgy. She describes herself as a very visual maker, who often begins projects by sketching out ideas for costumes and choreography.

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Neve likes to think of each piece as a way for her to develop “a responsiveness to different spaces, audiences and concerns beyond me:  how we relate across spaces through movement, colour and pattern is a really rich site for me.” In her recent dance and sound work Screensaver Series, a chain of performers are dressed in retro-patterned costumes moving almost constantly with physical touch in a symmetrical choreography that explores attention and visual perception, and acting on the nervous systems of the audiences.

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“A lot of my experience inside of the works that I'm making and performing is about contact, whether that's visual contact or whether that's touch. How when we come into relation with others – through touch, through speech, through how we see each other– there's a lot that can be understood or potentially revealed to be misunderstood. I’m interested in those dynamics” Neve explains.

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She focuses on creating durational pieces that invite the audience and participants to become curious about each other and open up to new ways of relating and sharing knowledge. Her durational performance Satelliser: a dance for the gallery explores ways of relating that include conversation between the majority female co-workers (performers) and the gallery audience. Wearing high-vis style jackets made by Neve – referring to the often gendered labour of care workers and positionality of maintenance workers – these performers subtly alter their spatial configurations in response to the visitors’ movements, and engage in an open, meandering verbal dialogue with each other and the audience. The piece makes space for a range of perspectives, and explores how experiences and identities are dynamic or ‘put into orbit’ (the meaning of satelliser in French).