Seeing Art with the Whole Body
Workshop series in collaboration with IMT Gallery
Engaging the sensory machine at IMTwentyOne exhibition for this 3rd edition
Tuesday 16 June
7 – 9pm
We have been taught to look at art. To stand at a respectful distance, eyes forward, opinion forming. This workshop asks what happens when the whole sensory body becomes the instrument of encounter instead.
Through simple movement scores, we disrupt the habits that gallery spaces install in us — the forward gaze, the stillness, the performance of correct attention. We slow perception down until felt sense arrives before thought. We let the body lead.
Something shifts when this happens. The audience does not simply engage with the work — it becomes the site in which the work takes place. Attention moves from what am I looking at? to how am I relating to what is here? The gallery is no longer a neutral container. It becomes a relational field in which body, space, and artwork are continuously shaping each other.
This is not about movement for its own sake. It is about discovering what becomes available in an artwork — and in yourself — when you stop managing how you receive it. The process is guided without directing outcomes. It creates conditions in which perception can open and become more available to itself.
‘By the end, the group had coalesced into one living, breathing entity, mirroring the content of the show. Through Claire giving us permission to engage with the work in radical ways, the audience was able to connect with the work on a deeper level.’
Fran Hayes, artist whose work formed the basis of the first edition
‘I noticed things about the artworks I would not have from just looking alone.’
‘I was embodying characters from the paintings and it allowed me to imagine the perspective of being in the painting.’
‘I’ve often found contemporary art difficult to understand. What this workshop offered was a different way in.’
‘The experience was not only aesthetic, but intimate and deeply moving. It shifted the usual distance I feel with artworks.’
‘It brought back a sense of imagination that feels very alive in childhood, but harder to access as adults. In that space, it felt real.’
‘By embodying the artwork, I felt more connected to it. It was as if I could enter into the artists’ imaginative
world.’
Quotes from participants
For this third edition we move with IMTwentyOne, the gallery’s 21st anniversary benefit exhibition bringing together over 100 works by artists including Amanda Beech, Adam Chodzko, Benedict Drew, Soyoung Hyun, Melanie Jackson, Tai Shani, and Suzanne Treister.
The first edition was in conversation with Fran Hayes’ Thick, Stretchy, Sticky Space. The second with The House, a group exhibition about home-as-exhibition and gallery-as-home.
No movement experience needed. Only a willingness to let go of how you’ve been taught to look.