Matt's Gallery is delighted to reopen its Bermondsey space with Big Slit, a new work developed by Leah Capaldi during and in response to the successive lockdowns that have taken place across the UK over the last year.

Big Slit pulls together elements of sculpture, installation, performance and moving image, drawing on a range of themes recurrent in the artist’s practice. The work exists at the slippery intersection of sculpture and performance, rotating the roles of subject and object through surveillance and spectatorship.

A static body is in a state of continuous performance. Restricted from view, broadcast live. The work aims to amalgamate real life performance and live broadcast circulating the sticky shared reality in between.

Capaldi's interventions into the space imply a degree of violence. They remain minimal yet puncture the space, altering how we move through it.

Please be aware that exhibition visitors will be recorded by CCTV and live-streamed to mattsgallery.org during opening hours. Big Slit exists across the exhibition at the gallery and the live stream.

The work offers a new dimension to Capaldi’s exploration of performance sculpture - an active state that takes place at the interface between live body, moving image and object.

Big Slit is accompanied by Q5, the fifth instalment in our ongoing series of artist interviews.

With thanks to: Gordon Raeburn, Jonathan Caruana, Barbara Capaldi, Chris Ratcliffe at Garudio Studiage, KS Objective, An Endless Supply, Benedict Drew and Angus Braithwaite.