Rosie Hastings + Hannah Quinlan

Bold new video works by five artists of the moment living or working in London will take over the world’s largest public screens this July in London, Seoul and Tokyo. Curated by Sir Norman Rosenthal, ‘LONDON ZEITGEIST’ comprised of five independent films by Larry Achiampong, Alvaro Barrington, Matt Copson, artist duo Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings, together forming a bold and comprehensive showcase of the most promising artists within a generation to emerge from London. 

This group exhibition adopts its title from Rosenthal’s 1982 exhibition ‘Zeitgeist’ that was held in Berlin’s Martin-Gropius-Bau almost forty years ago, and which was arguably one of the most historically significant global painting surveys of the 20th century, bringing together 45 of the world’s most driven and symbolically heroic artists of the moment. Rosenthal’s unwavering commitment and capacity to embolden the great talent of the time has become a defining characteristic of his career. In 1981, Rosenthal introduced artists such as Baselitz, Kiefer, Polke and Richter to an audience beyond Germany in ‘A New Spirit In Painting’ and helped launch the careers of  Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas and many others with ‘Sensation’ in 1997 at the Royal Academy of Art in London:

“That complex German word “Zeitgeist” (Time/Spirit) that more and more has entered the English language – just like “Kindergarten” once did (!) – naturally relates to place as well as time. Each of the four young artists chosen I believe address these issues subjectively, inevitably, sometimes obliquely, yet each in a “Spectacular” and “Beautiful” way onto the iconic Piccadilly Lights screen. They then are transmitted to the other side of the globe. They are pictures both of issues and fantasies that obsess four individual artists living and working in London, forever a huge urban national centre, and that hopefully too will touch audiences around the world.” – Sir Norman Rosenthal

For Circa we will focus on the act of queer dance as a space of freedom, resistance and identity formation. The film will look at the gesture of dance as forming a bridge between the alienated individual confined to a domestic world (with its inherent ideological burden of heterosexuality, property relations and traditional gender roles) and the broader LGBTQ culture/community. The hedonistic joy of dancing is reflected in the text from La Traviata: 

Everything is folly in this world

That does not give us pleasure.

Rosie Hastings & Hannah Quinlan (both b.1991, London and Newcastle) live and work in South-East London. Working across film, drawing, installation, performance and fresco, Hannah and Rosie address the sociocultural and political structures that reinforce conservatism and discriminatory practices within and around the LGBTQ+ community. Their work archives the politics, histories and aesthetics of queer spaces and culture in the West, and proposes strategies for the redistribution of power in relation to gender, class and race.