Stages | Performance in response to Lubaina `Himid's Plan B Paintings

In this intimate performance, staged in the gallery, Andra Simons embodies the text in Lubaina Himd's Plan B paintings to mark the closing of the third chapter of Stages. Answering the call of Himid's words, Simons responds to them with writing of his own.

Simons is a Bermudian writer and performer living in London. He studied theatre in Toronto, Canada, and published his first collection of poetry The Joshua Tales (Treehouse Press, 2009), followed by Turtlemen (Copy Press, 2021). Simons has held workshops and lectured at various universities in the UK. He has also been published in several magazines, journals and anthologies, as well as performed at numerous events, venues and festivals. His work is also part of the programme for Connecting Thin Black Lines 1985 – 2025, an exhibition curated by Himid, currently on view at the ICA, London.

About the exhibition:

Lubaina Himid’s Plan B series consists of paintings which reflect on time spent as an artist-in-residence at Tate St Ives from 1998 to 1999. Each work is coupled as two canvases, often bisected by a modernist use of colour. One canvas is inscribed with writing and paired with another canvas depicting imaginary communal interior spaces – variously populated by chairs, clocks and ladders as well as isolated windows with views of the sea. The title of the series, Plan B, evokes a sense of event – its secondary nature suggesting that Plan A failed or did not take place. The evocations of the ‘plan’ are multiple: as an itinerary to conjure a set of representations; as cartographic, strategic or schematic; as a draft or spatial projection upon a two-dimensional surface, sketching a speculative, hidden or familiar space.

STAGES is a series of three solo presentations by Andrea Büttner, Knut Henrik Henriksen and Lubaina Himid taking place in short sequence between 2 July – 9 August 2025. This programme offers an encounter with works considered ephemeral, site-specific or poetically engaged with social constructs often difficult to parse through language. Extensive or instruction based, their mediums challenge exhibition formats. Stages resonates within the context of Hollybush Gardens' 20-year exhibtion history, celebrated this year, with each iteration accompanied by new or archival writing and an event.