REVIEW: New Contemporaries Live at South London Gallery

© Makiko Harris photo credits Carlos Basilisco

Part of the New Contemporaries showcase, New Contemporaries Live explores performance as a space where memory, language, and belonging are examined across forms, including spoken word, lecture, choreography, and live music.

Alia Gargum’s When I Think About Libya is a spoken-word piece shaped through the translation of colloquial Libyan Arabic into English and back again. This process introduces shifts in meaning that mirror the experience of displacement. The text is attentive to how language carries memory while also exposing its fragility. Identity appears in motion, altered through each act of translation, with culture held in phrases that are continually reshaped.

This attention to memory and context transfers into a more analytical register in Christopher Steenson’s Each one started, each one started, each one started, a performance-lecture connected to his project The Long Grass (2022–24). The work moves between documentation and reflection, expanding on ideas of context, use, and belonging. References to place suggest connections to Northern Ireland, where questions of land and history remain present. The lecture format allows the work to unfold through layers of narration, situating the artwork within broader cultural and spatial frameworks.

From there, the programme moves into a more physical and visual language with Makiko Harris’ Needle Dance Live, which brings together movement, sculpture, and sound. Four dancers interact with large-scale needle forms, their bodies bound and extended through thick red rope costumes designed by Deborah Milner. The imagery of thread and binding runs throughout, suggesting connection, tension, and fate. Harris performs the score live on violin, co-composed with Carlos Basilisco, giving the work a strong physical presence through sound. The scale of the sculptures and the density of the materials create an environment that feels immersive and charged.

The afternoon then settles into a more reflective tone with Will Pham and the VLC Band’s You Belong Here, combining spoken word with live music and drawing on memories of Vietnamese community life in London. Pham’s narration frames these scenes with a gentle, steady delivery, while the voices within the performance carry distinct inflexions and rhythms that reflect lived experience and migration. This shared vocal presence builds a sense of familiarity and togetherness, where belonging emerges through collective expression. The piece centres on communal spaces and continuity, evoking mid-2000s gatherings with a resonant energy that is both personal and collective.

The music carries a slow, nostalgic tone, with a sense of warmth that fills the South London Gallery. The space opens onto the garden designed by Gabriel Orozco, where the light and atmosphere extend the mood of the performance. There is a feeling of ease in the room, as if held in an early spring afternoon, with a sense that things can settle, or begin again.

★★★★

This event includes spoken word, performance, live music and choreographed works by New Contemporaries exhibiting artists.

For more information about New Contemporaries Live, please visit: https://www.southlondongallery.org/events/nc-live-2026/ or https://www.newcontemporaries.org.uk/article/nc-live-at-south-london-gallery

Credits

Artists: Alia Gargum, Makiko Harris, Will Pham and The VLC Band, and Christopher Steenson