60% of the city’s venues have closed since the 2000s with spaces catering to queer femininities and gender-diversity being most affected.

Our community no longer has a consistent physical presence in London.

The goal of this exhibition in the CSM window gallery is to TAKE UP SPACE, and find new ways to hold space, together!

Investigating new approaches to dialogue in public, contributions to this exhibition will be community-driven and crowdsourced throughout February and March 2024.

Students and staff are invited to get involved by contributing at in-person meet-ups or submitting notes and images to this Padlet page or email u.steven@csm.arts.ac.uk.

We will meet on Wednesdays at 18:00 in the CSM bar to collaborate, plan and discuss contributions or take overs of the window gallery. Dates will be announced via this Padlet page.

Photo by Niamh Sutton

For many of us, our body is our architecture - our clothing our armour.

In this iteration of TAKE UP SPACE we enter the Lesbian Launderette: a world of queer domesticity where our dykiest clothes are being cared for.

In this urban idyll, even if just for a moment, we can take off our armour.

Collectively, our pieces hang on washing lines, forming a living archive of our clothing to document and celebrate the history of lesbian fashion in its multiple and varied forms.

Drop your clothes at the launderette on Wednesday 28.2. from 5-7pm or at the CSM delivery bay addresses to: TUS launderette, Lethaby Window Gallery, CSM.

Proposal by Lily Flahman

Graphics by Ava Sutherland

Part of TAKE UP SPACE exhibition at CSM

The perfect flower is a hermaphrodite, a flower with both male and female organs. Over 90% of all FLOWERING plants are hermaphroditic,

PERFECT FLOWER was a performative action in the Pudding Mill Lane Area in London, developed in response to Safety for women, girls and gender diverse people in public spaces.

PERFECT FLOWER was produced in collaboration wiht architecture practice what if: projects, choreographer Heidi Rustgaard, photographer Henri, and Biff, Shelby, Jade Aadja, Jacoda, Gideon, Star and Mahiema from Stratford Youth Zone.

Costumes were made from discarded cardboard during a series of workshops at Stratford Youth Zone in Oct - Nov 2023. A selection of costume together with slides are displayed as part of the TAKE UP SPACE exhibition at the Lethaby window gallery.

PERFECT FLOWER was commissioned by LLDC as part of 'Safety for women, girls and gender diverse people in public spaces'.

(aka oyster fungi)

Rumoured to be ‘second to none in their capacity for evil’—fungi have seemingly been framed as more foe than friend in the British historical-cultural context, which is said to be amongst the most mycophobic cultures in the world. Indeed, mycophobia and queerphobia are intimate bedfellows, entangling and enduring, influencing spaces all around us.

A site-specific encounter, here, crowd-sourced Take Up Space community responses are translated into personal objects with queering significance which, in turn, become substrate for mycelial growth. Doing so, fungi may become mediators for unfolding and transforming vital counter narratives and collective imaginations. May we never be limited by human language or dominant stereotypes, expectations, and assumptions.

Presented as part of PhD work by Sara Vanore Rewkiewicz at the CSM Grow Lab, this practice-led research unites fungi as queer, non-binary beings and local LGBTQIA+ communities. The project aims to strengthen transspecies queer solidarity and create a space where our shared stories may be held.

Installation by Sara Vanore Rewkiewicz, PhD student, CSM.

Supervised by Dr Heather Barnett (DoS), Dr Andrea Zimmerman and Dr Caterina Albano.

With special thanks to Ulrike Steven and the Take Up Space community.