Emily Scarrott with Ikon Youth Programme

Not Lost At Sea 

Not Lost At Sea is the result of Emily Scarrott’s workshop with Ikon Youth Programme (IYP) which encourages thought about how to unpick performances and think about the ecological components of an artwork through responsive practice. 

This performance draws on the tools gained through participation in Melati Suryodarmo’s performance art laboratory, Present to Presence, at Ikon in May 2023. 

“I am entering this project thinking about the ways that material, ecological and human bodies sit together within Melati’s practice. When Alastair MacLennan positioned a dead fish within his performance in Melati Suryodarmo’s laboratory, words of warning travelled far, wide and deep beneath the water. Now, fish take to the land to celebrate the life of their fallen sibling through eulogy and enquiry.” Emily Scarrott 

Presented as part of Melati Suryodarmo’s exhibition Passionate Pilgrim (17 May – 3 September 2023). 

About the artist

Emily Scarrott is an artist, and writer from the Black Country, currently completing a practice-led PhD at Birmingham School of Art. She is particularly interested in making durational and unstaged performances which are informed by an ongoing preoccupation with science fiction and a curiosity in how we might practice desired worlds into being. Underpinning Emily’s practice is an exploration of the absurd as a queer landscape where reproduction of heteronormative values can be avoided. These experiences are led by a nourishing and tactile relationship with a single unfertilised hen’s egg. Emily has cared for the egg for almost four years now; he is doing quite well, and they go everywhere together.

This exhibition is supported by Bagri Foundation, British Council through the Connections Through Culture grants programme, Birmingham City University, University of Leeds, and the Melati Suryodarmo Exhibition Circle: A.I. Gallery; ShanghART, Tanya Michele Amador and Michiel Verhoeven; and Michelangelo and Lourdes Samson.

It is developed in collaboration with Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara (Museum MACAN), Jakarta, Indonesia.

The IYP workshop is supported by Freelands Foundation.