Lyónn Wolf’s De-production at Flat Time House, London

Flat Time House in London and Askeaton Contemporary Arts presented the work of Lyónn Wolf, with an artist residency, public programme and first UK solo exhibition.

Over the past decade Wolf has developed an interdisciplinary practice, oscillating between installation, performance, and experimental workshop formats. Key to his approach has been an ongoing practice of DIY publishing, often done collectively, to traverse queer economies and spatial politics, the lived present and imagined futures. Incorporating auto-fiction and anecdote, Wolf engages a tradition of queer-transfeminist working class vernacular and ethics, finding forms of recycling, thrift and ephemera to pose questions about value, accumulation, and authorship that, in his own words, ‘posits the imagination as a political tool with radical potential that can exist and erupt anywhere and at any time.’

Wolf’s De-production created an installation running through a succession of spaces in Flat Time House, dramatically transforming its interiors through sculptural and textual interventions. Playing upon the narrative and spatial tropes of popular Science Fiction, De-production has grown into an ongoing project for Wolf, tracing states of transition through what he describes as ‘an intentional re-patterning of reproductive logics’. Themes drawn from close readings of Ridley Scott’s Alien motion picture and subsequent sequels from 1979 to 1997 are a dominant aspect explored – monstrous motherhood, alienated embodiments and transitional states. Moving through the spaces of FTHo Wolf offered spatial inflections that hold the body awash with colour, enclosed by temporal thresholds, drenched in sound and seduced by ephemera. In this context, Wolf developed and is maintaining an archive, The Breeding Room, acting as a counter to traditional institutional intentions and structures, to instead accommodate artistic production, personal archiving and exchange of ideas and a practice of gathering. 

A limited-edition zine produced by Wolf as part of his summer 2024 residency at Flat Time House, De-production – First Trimester Mourning Sickness features contributions by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais, Linda Stupart, Raju Rage and Promona Sengupta continues to be available here.

About Flat Time House:
Flat Time House (FTHo) was the studio home of John Latham (1921–2006), recognised as one of the most significant and influential British post-war artists. In 2003, Latham declared the house a living sculpture, naming it FTHo after his theory of time, ‘Flat Time’. Until his passing, Latham opened his door to anyone interested in thinking about art. It is in this spirit that Flat Time House opened in London in 2008 as a gallery with a programme of exhibitions and events exploring the artist's practice, his theoretical ideas and their continued relevance. It also provides a centre for alternative learning, which includes the John Latham archive, and an artist's residency space. 

Photos: Rita Silva