Free entry
Thu 13 Aug, 7pm
Assembly Room
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| Wednesday | 11am–6pm |
| Thursday | 11am–9pm |
| Friday | 11am–6pm |
| Saturday | 11am–6pm |
| Sunday | 11am–6pm |
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About This Event
Drop-in, relaxed performance environment.
Lydia Newman presents Sand Suit 4.0 (2026), the fourth iteration of an ongoing live performance work with wearable sculpture, movement and spoken text.
First created in 2021 as a way of externalising emotional and societal weight, the Sand Suit has become a tool for Lydia to examine what she is carrying and how it might be worked with, released or transformed through performance. Heavy, unstable and easily tangled, the suit shifts with each iteration, keeping some elements and shedding others as the work continues to meet Lydia in her changing states.
Presented alongside Lydia’s ongoing painting series In the Wake of Ruin (2024–ongoing), Sand Suit 4.0 continues her exploration of weight, entanglement, transformation and rewilding.
Leading up to the performance, Newman will also host two participatory workshops in collaboration with Jae Gibbs as space-holder, Tangle/Untangle (2026), on Saturday 25 and Sunday 26 July 2026.
About the Events
‘Tangle’ Workshop #1: 1.30 – 4.30pm, Saturday 25 July 2026
‘Untangle’ Workshop #2: 2-4pm, Sunday 26 July 2026.
‘Sand Suit 4.0’ Performance: 7pm, Thursday 13 August 2026. Drop-in, relaxed performance environment.
These events are curated by Wan Yi Sandra Lam, Curator: Programmes & Engagement at Bow Arts in collaboration with Whitechapel Gallery.
This event is part of Backyard Biennial.
Lydia Newman is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, sculpture, installation, live performance and creative facilitation. With over 15 years of participatory and socially engaged practice across the UK and internationally, her work explores how inherited histories, social structures and systems of survival shape the body, psyche and sense of self.
Her practice is deeply interconnected, with each medium feeding the other: images from live performances often appear in paintings, while forms, materials and themes from her paintings return through sculpture, workshops and performance. Her current body of work, In the Wake of Ruin (2024–ongoing), brings together painting, The Sand Suit – her wearable sculpture, live performance and participatory practice to explore weight, entanglement, rewilding and transformation.
Newman completed an MA in Performance Making at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2021, having previously studied Drama at Queen Mary, University of London. She was runner-up for the East London Art Prize 2025 and was awarded the New Emergence Art Prize 2025.
Recent performances and exhibitions include the East London Art Prize exhibition, Nunnery Gallery (2025); Sand Suit 2.0, Nunnery Gallery (2025); Sand Suit 3.0, Whitechapel Gallery as part of the East London Art Prize Gallery Takeover (2025); Coercive Contortion, The TATE INSTITUTE (2024); and The Renovation Revisited, All Hail Disordia, The Anatomy Theatre, Summerhall (2023). Newman was also a performer in Lygia Clark’s Corpo Coletivo and Elastic Net, Whitechapel Gallery (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.
Find out more about the wider programme here.
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.
