East London Art Prize Late

All activity in Assembly Room is drop in, with no booking required.

6.15-6.45pm | Gusty Ferro and Anelena Toku 

A sound performance in response to Gusty Ferro’s installation, exploring noise, disruption, and the body’s relationship to the sculptures.  

In collaboration with Anelena Toku, the duo creates an intense soundscape by physically interacting with the sculptural pieces in states of displacement. Using contact microphones and modular synthesisers, they capture and amplify vibrations generated through movement. The performance highlights the sonic potential of touch, pressure, and motion—where sound is produced and shaped through direct engagement with the materials. 

PLEASE NOTE: this performance uses a strobe light and flashing lights that may affect people sensitive to light.

7.15-7.50pm | Lydia Newman, Sand Suit 3.0 (2025)  

In Sand Suit 3.0 (2025), Lydia Newman creates an embodied storytelling experience weaving personal and ancestral memories and invites the audience to co-facilitate her process of excavating and releasing what contorts her soul’s expression as she embraces rewilding.  

The performance also features Lydia’s painting In the Wake of Ruin, She is Here (2024), examining inherited ideas about race, globalisation, class and gender, rooted in the foundations of colonialism as experienced by a descendant of the Black Diaspora. 

8.15-9pm | Joseph Ijoyemi, Candles in the Dark (2025)  

Candles in the Dark (2025) explores social issues related to migration and integration, focusing on the experiences of Black communities. It examines how cultural identity is maintained and reshaped through movement across different places.  

Using archives as musical samples, the performance blends pre-recorded tracks with live sound production, incorporating conversations, social media clips, music and everyday sounds. A screen displays text and moving images, creating a visual element that reflects the themes of migration, belonging and cultural influence. 

In between the performances at Gallery 2, NTS host/resident babyschön will be DJing.   

6-8.30pm | Liang-Jung Chen, UK Indefinite Leave to Remain Application Fee (2025) 

Drop-in, no booking required.

An interactive installation of Liang-Jung Chen’s two-month performance project UK Indefinite Leave to Remain Application Fee (2025), investigating labour precarity, survival strategies and the economic realities faced by many migrants in the country. Through a visual archive of timetables, invoices, video clips and more, Chen presents her first-hand experience of working in on zero-hour and gig-economy jobs across London to earn the funds required to apply for settlement. Join us to participate in Chen’s installation where she turns the costs of UK permanent residency into a form of embodied, artistic labour documentation.  

6.30-7.30pm and 7.30-8.30pm | ‘AI, a Theatre of Memory’ with dmstfctn  

A talk unpacking Waluigi’s Purgatory (2024), the second instalment in dmstfctn’s ongoing GOD MODE trilogy of works about AI anomalies, followed by an interactive screening of the work. Set in a 3D theatre simulated in real-time using a game engine, Waluigi’s Purgatory tells the story of an AI that finds itself in a purgatory for cheating AIs.  

dmstfctn will unpack the lore, references and characters behind the work – inspired by real-world examples of anomalies and cheating in AI, as well as by the ‘Waluigi Effect’ theory, proposing that generative AI may sometimes act rogue due to the large amount of protagonist-antagonist tropes found in internet texts used to train them. 

6-8.30pm | curated film programme

Drop-in, no booking required.

Laisul Hoque, The Purpose was to Document the Other Side (2023), 15 minutes  

Informed by the exploration of intimate conversation, the film compares the artist’s upbringing with that of his mother, addressing generational trauma and confronting the emotional distance from his father. Through this documentary, Laisul Hoque engages in the powerful act of curating their narrative together — vulnerable and emotional. It presents a compelling example of reclaiming personal and familial stories. 

Eugene Macki, Anachronism (2024), 2 minutes 

A video documenting a performance that explores ideas about mobility, struggle, freedom through limitation, resistance, time, place, distance and measurement. Eugene Macki questions the nature of performing an action, as he is interested in how the body occupies and engages with spaces.  

Eugene Macki, Opening Dialogue (2019-20), 7 minutes 

An installation performance created in Long Beach, Washington, United States. Eugene Macki uses objects and actions to construct an arena that investigates four types of transformations: translation, rotation, reflection, and dilation, while also investigating the relationship between being and becoming. Being is the immutable, the present, while becoming is the transformation, the constant change. 

Yang Zou, I love you, life. I hope it’s great again (2024), 23 minutes  

A short film documenting the artist’s train journey along the Trans-Siberian Railway across Russia over 9 days during the Russia-Ukraine War in 2023. To Yang Zou, it is not just a mere record of his trip but a narrative with various dimensions, from his observations of everyday life on the route – people, food, music and life itself, to memories and imagination – love, secrets, death and power.

babyschön is a London-based DJ. Whether in her live sets or on her weekly Soup to Nuts slot on NTS Radio, she connects the dots between dub, new wave, synth pop and left-field house, always keeping it weird but rhythmic. 

As well as regular sets at beloved DIY spots like Gut Level and The Gun, babyschön’s blend of angular guitars, chuggy synths and winding rhythms has taken her to institutions like Karmakoma (Belgrade), Sameheads (Berlin), Hope House (Leeds), the Golden Lion (Todmorden) and the White Hotel (Manchester). She’s also taken the more pumping, sun-soaked end of her collection to Boiler Room Festival, Pike’s, We Out Here and more.  

You can find her past radio shows and mixes on the NTS archive or through SoundCloud. 

Liang-Jung Chen is an interdisciplinary artist working across drawing, object, installation and performance. Her practice is deeply informed by material culture in anthropological study which leads her to investigate the usage, consumption, creation and trade of artefacts, as well as the behaviours, norms and rituals associated with them. Intrigued by tensions embedded in everyday scenarios, each series of her work scrutinises a specific interaction between a daily object and its user.   

Chen also runs ii (initial initiatives), a design and research-driven creative practice, and hardware archive, a virtual home to a random selection of household hardware items found online and around the world. Selected exhibitions include Regarding the Retractability of Boundaries, V&A, London (2024); Have you had breakfast yet? Hweg, Cornwall (2024); On Tenderness and Time, Daniel Katz Gallery, London (2024); Minus20degree Biennale, Flachau (2024); Plus20degree, Galerie Im Traklhaus, Salzburg (2024); Playing House, Hudson Wilder, New York (2023; The Spout and its Churn Rate, Tangent Projects, Barcelona (2022); Local Ware: cooking edition, Oros, Marseille (2021); The egg rack made a disclaimer 2.0, Now Space, Taipei (2021); The egg rack made a disclaimer 1.0, Error22, Tainan (2020); 1 two 1 two, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2020); The Misused 3.0, Coal Drops Yard, London (2020); The Misused 2.0, Taiwan Design Research Institute, Taipei (2020); The Misused 2.0, Piet Hein Eek, Eindhoven (2019).  

London-based artist duo dmstfctn, pronounced demystification, explores opaque systems of power through performance, installation, video games and film. Their work often involves audiences directly, inviting them into the ‘demystification’ of systems by replicating and replaying them, and into their ‘remystification’ by building worlds, characters and myths atop them.  

Since 2018, dmstfctn have performed and exhibited internationally in venues such as Berghain, Serpentine, Design Museum, HKW and at festivals such as Unsound, CTM, transmediale, Impakt. In 2021, Krisis Publishing released ECHO FX, the duo’s show about Brexit market manipulation later included in Ø (Flatlines/Hyperdub). In 2019, Mille Plateaux released Flash Demons, a collection of performances focusing on financial market crashes. From 1 November 2024 to 31 March 2025, dmstfctn’s video game Godmode Epochs will be exhibited at the Singapore Art Museum as part of Open Systems, curated by Rafi Abdullah and Duncan Bass.  

Gusty Ferro is a cross-disciplinary artist whose work explores the relationship between architecture and the body, as well as the materiality of mundane objects, urban infrastructure and displacement. Their practice spans sound, sculpture, video, drawing, printmaking and installation. By closely observing their surroundings and reflecting on how specific spaces affect emotional states, Ferro creates a sentimental cartography, one that is constantly shifting and redefined with each significant encounter. Their work acts as a form of translation, responding to these lived experiences. 

Gusty Ferro previously studied Visual Arts at Centro Universitário Belas Artes de São Paulo and at the School of the Damned, UK. They graduated from the Royal Academy Schools post graduation programme in 2025. Selected solo shows include Hello Neighbours at TACO! (London, 2024), Grinding Series at SWG3 Gallery (Glasgow, 2016), Programa de Exposicoes at Centro Cultural São Paulo (2010); and international residencies include Glasgow Sculpture Studios (2016) and Centre de Producció Hangar (Barcelona, 2010). In 2020 Ferro was recipient of the Arts Council England, National Lottery Project Grant and developed research and a new body of work in Blackpool followed by an exhibition at Abingdon Studios. 

Laisul Hoque was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where he studied BA English Literature at North South University before completing an MA in Contemporary Photography, Practices and Philosophies at Central Saint Martins, UAL, London. Hoque is the winner of East London Art Prize 2025 and a finalist for the 2024 CIRCA Prize. Drawing from his memories and lived experiences, he creates image-based works and installations that explore and decode microhistories and their global impacts. His practice investigates communication, miscommunication, and adopts a reparative reading of the past. 

Selected exhibitions / screenings include An Ode to All the Flavours, a day-long Exhibition, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2024); The Purpose was to Document the Other Side, Group Screening in the International Program, EXPERIMENTA, Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore (2024); The Purpose was to Document the Other Side, screened at Piccadilly Lights screen, London, Limes Kurfürstendamm screen, Berlin, Essilor Luxottica screen in Cadorna Square, Milan, as part of CIRCA Prize 2024; An Ode to All the Flavours, Solo Exhibition, Kobi Nazrul Centre, London (2024); The Purpose was to Document the Other Side, Solo Screening, Studio 6/6, Dhaka (2024); Shorts: Joyful Lands, Joyful Bodies, Chronic Youth Film Festival, Group Screening, Barbican Centre, London (2024); I Don’t Call Enough but I’m Here Now, Solo Exhibition, Oitij-jo, London (2024).  

Joseph Ijoyemi is a Swedish-Nigerian multidisciplinary artist whose work combines diverse materials and imagery to tell stories fuelled by life experiences, cultural conversations, and a deep connection to his heritage. His output includes sculptures, multimedia installations, and sound performances, through which he shapes conversations around the African diaspora. 

Ijoyemi holds a MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins. He has previously won the prestigious Helen Scott Lidgett Award, and was shortlisted for the Evening Standard Prize 2023. His works were exhibited at Camden Art Centre, London, and Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, as part of Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2023. Joseph is co-founder of The Collective Makers, and organisation that mentors and empowers young creatives, and he was recently awarded the MEAD Fellowship at UAL for his project Tracing Roots: Exploring Nigerian Heritage Through Ondo’s Treasures. 

Eugene Macki is a visual artist who lives and works in both the UK and the United States. His oeuvre includes a range of media and techniques, such as installation, sculpture, land art, experimental video, performance, and collaborative practice.  

Macki is a member and Trustee of the Royal Society of Sculptors (EST 1905, UK) and on the Board of AA2A as a Non-Executive Director. AA2A (EST 1999, UK) delivers an artist residency programme with professional practice development at art and design institutions across England. Between 2012 and 2014, Macki and Barbara Tong founded Void Art Gallery in London. Macki founded Moon Spring in 2019-2022, and launched Peut Guard in 2023 (a project that consists of an artist award, research retreat, curatorial program, and exhibition). His artwork has been displayed in museums, galleries, and outdoor spaces. 

Lydia Newman is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses painting, sculpture, installation, live performance and creative workshop facilitation. With a background in drama and performance making, her work is deeply interconnected, with each discipline bleeding into the others – images from live performances often appear in paintings, while the forms and themes in paintings inform the shapes and concepts in performances. Newman won the second prize of East London Art Prize 2025.  

Newman completed an MA in Performance Making at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2021, having previously studied Drama at Queen Mary, University of London. Between these programmes, she focused on creative facilitation, delivering self-development programmes grounded in creative practice to communities in the UK and internationally within the charity and NGO sector. Recent performances and exhibitions include Coercive Contortion, The TATE INSTITUTE (2024); The Renovation Revisited, All Hail Disordia, The Anatomy Theatre, Summerhall (2023); Tangled Series, Gallery 32, Barcelona (2023); A Primal Scream, Black Discourse, as part of online exhibition The Body is My First Mother (2021) and site-specific audio journey The Multi-story Time Park, Ilford Shopping Centre (2021). Newman was also a performer in Lygia Clark’s Corpo Coletivo & Elastic Net, Whitechapel Gallery (2024).  

Yang Zou is a multidisciplinary visual artist working across film, installation and photography. His work particularly addresses ‘soft power’ – how political narratives are deployed through cultural production by the state to communicate certain principles and aspirations. Combining a purely observational style with poetic elements that focus on people’s emotions, his work is concerned with the misunderstandings between humans and machines as well as the collective anxieties that arise from societal shifts.  

Zou worked as a cultural journalist in China for many years before studying in the UK. He holds an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art and has been selected as one of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024.  

The East London Art Prize Events Programme is a dynamic, free public programme open to all, which builds on the Prize’s ethos of providing ongoing support, development, and networking opportunities for artists in east London and beyond.   

Featuring a constellation of workshops, talks, panels, lates, socials, labs, walks, and takeovers in collaboration with our Prize partners and featuring some familiar faces from our shortlist of 12 fantastic artists, this year’s events programme celebrates and pays homage to the huge abundance of talent and creativity nestled in east London.  

These events have been developed by Wan Yi Sandra Lam, Curator: Programmes & Engagement at Bow Arts in collaboration with our Prize partners the British Council, The Line, London College of Fashion (LCF), London Legacy Development Corporation, University College London (UCL), V&A East, Whitechapel Gallery and Dulux.  

The East London Art Prize is an all-media art prize designed to showcase the talent of artists working and living in east London, with an accompanying event programme supporting artists’ careers and opportunities. The Prize is generously funded by Minerva and Prue MacLeod. Find out more on the Prize webpage here. 

Since 1994, Bow Arts has nurtured London’s diverse creativity and talent. We’ve provided artists and creative practitioners with affordable workspace, connecting them with local communities and supporting their professional development. We give communities throughout London greater access to and interaction with the arts, through our schools programme, workshops, exhibitions and events.

We’re an arts and education charity and a social enterprise; our services support the growth of sustainable local creative economies. Over 900 artists, designers and makers are affiliated with Bow Arts through our workspaces, Nunnery Gallery, affordable housing for creatives, and award-winning schools and young people’s learning programme.