HAPPENS A. D. Crawforth, Minna Haukka, Emily Mulenga, Ellis Parkinson, Naomi Siderfin, A.L. Steiner
01-18 November 2025
Monday-Saturday 11.00-17.00
Preview 31 October 18.00-21.00
ASC Gallery | Free to Entry
HAPPENS links Vauxhall art-neighbours ASC and Beaconsfield, as both organisations celebrate 30 years of operation in South London.
HAPPENS celebrates Beaconsfield's longstanding methodology of co-creation and artistic experimentation with artists diverse in age and identity. The link with ASC is made explicit by exhibiting the personal work of Beaconsfield's founding artist-directors A. David Crawforth and Naomi Siderfin and their ASC studio- mate Minna Haukka, together with younger generation artists Emily Mulenga and Ellis Parkinson, and New York-based eco-feminist A.L. Steiner – all of whom extend commissions from Beaconsfield's anniversary programme Manifesto for Sustainable Experimentation. HAPPENS reflects Beaconsfield's commitment to a present moment that interrogates the notion of 'environment', drawing attention to constructions of identity.
For lead curator Naomi Siderfin, appropriating gallery space as an extension of pictorial space represents an ongoing engagement with the landscape tradition, and her architecturally inscribed text 'NOW' sets the context for others. A.L. Steiner's video 'To Chnge Evrythng' is an anguished cry from USA, as physical landscapes and civil liberties simultaneously erode.
With similar urgency, Ellis Parkinson's 'Universal Soldier' reflects on the toxic commercial relationship between world-leading arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin and clothing manufacturer Carhartt, with the figure of an unknown soldier-fashion-victim. Tapping into another side of youth culture, Emily Mulenga's pop song 'The Cure' commissioned for Beaconsfield's 30th anniversary celebrations is animated by a new video.
Minna Haukka extends her ongoing investigation into Beaconsfield's historic archive by chronologically carving the names of Beaconsfield projects into the wooden work bench that served as office desk since 1995 – as if to mark time, while Beaconsfield's paper-based and digital records are transferred to the national archive of Tate Britain. A. David Crawforth's intimate sound installation creates a sonic underbelly for the exhibition, permeating the space with an artificial organic presence.
Artists' Studio Company (ASC) is a London based registered charity founded in 1995. At the heart of its mission is a commitment to supporting artists and makers, and fostering public engagement and education in the arts. Read more here
Beaconsfield is an artist-led charity that aims to sustain a resource of excellence – a beacon – for the development and presentation of international contemporary art – the field. Beaconsfield has been based at the former Lambeth Ragged Schools since 1995. Read more here The building-based organisation emerged from the peripatetic art club Nosepaint, that happened in Vauxhall between 1991-1994 curated by A. David Crawforth and Naomi Siderfin.
Artist biographies
A. David Crawforth lives and works in London as a visual artist and co-founding director of artist-run space Beaconsfield. Crawforth's sonic and object centred work is characterised by an engagement with the interdisciplinary and collaborative. Performative and synthetic sonic works, whether solo or in collaboration, are united by the way in which they serve as interventions in private or public space. Artist collaborators have included Bruce Gilbert, Shane Cullen, Hayley Newman, Pan Sonic and Bob and Roberta Smith. Over and above their work as curators, Beaconsfield's founding directors have maintained a collaborative visual arts practice under the moniker of BAW (Beaconsfield Artworks) and have been commissioned to make numerous critical interventions in public space since 1994 in cities including London, Berlin, Dublin, Helsinki and Houston.
Minna Haukka is a Finnish artist based in London. Her practice is socially engaged with a special interest in radical archives, working class culture and hidden histories; revisiting collective memory that is documented by marginalised groups and individuals. Over the past ten years she has been an active member of the Feminist Library collective in London. Haukka has collaborated with Kristin Luke on the Mobile Feminist Library project since 2018: the white van converted into a library that was part of Still I Rise exhibitions at De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea and Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol in 2019. More recent projects include In Words, In Action, In Connection, Mostyn Gallery, 2021 and Companions, Forum Box Gallery, Helsinki, 2021. Haukka has exhibited internationally since 1993 and has co-curated projects at London's Showroom Gallery, Space Station 65, Beaconsfield and Feminist Library, and with HilbertRaum Gallery, Berlin.
Emily Mulenga is a multimedia artist whose practice spans video, digital and physical media and music. Using visuals and sound that draw upon video games, cartoons and the internet, her practice explores themes of capitalism, feminism, technology, love, millennial nostalgia and existential anxieties. Gloss and escapism meet humour and unease, spanning past, present and future. Mulenga has led workshops at Tate Britain, Firstsite and Camden Art Centre. In 2023 she was the recipient of the Arts Foundation Futures Award for Digital Art. She holds an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts, funded by a Frank Bowling Scholarship. She is also a trained classical musician.
Ellis Parkinson is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in London. His critical, research-based practice utilises photography, text and sculptural installation, among other mediums, to incorporate multiple layers of political subtext. Parkinson's aim is to test himself within the limits of the institutions he is himself a part of. To translate his lived experience, he employs reverie, satire and the surreal to examine historical and intellectual legacies, often quoting the forms and aesthetics of conceptual art, classic literature or cinema to open up space for intersectional thought and voices. Parkinson graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2023 as an inaugural Frank Bowling scholar. He has been awarded the Rosa Morison Memorial Medal, Berenice Goodwin Prize, Michael Farrell Memorial Prize and the Sue Jamieson Memorial Award. His work is held in University College London's Special Collection and the Lewis Family Private Collection.
Naomi Siderfin is an artist-researcher and co-founding director of the artist-led organisation Beaconsfield with which her personal practice has been closely aligned. The curation of an international programme of visual art projects in this context reinforced her departure from studio-based painting into a situated art practice relying on site and duration to drive it. Her recent doctoral research at Slade School of Fine Art UCL interrogated the relationship between installation practice and exhibition conventions, and the power dynamics of artist and curator. Over and above their work as curators, Beaconsfield's founding directors have maintained a collaborative visual arts practice under the moniker of BAW (Beaconsfield Artworks), and have been commissioned to make numerous critical interventions in public space since 1994 in cities including London, Berlin, Dublin, Helsinki and Houston.
A.L. Steiner utilises constructions of photography, video, installation, collage, performance, writing and curatorial work as seductive tropes channelled through the sensibility of a skeptical queer ecofeminist androgyne. Steiner is co-curator of Ridykeulous, co-founder of Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) and a serial collaborator. She is based in New York and is Faculty at Yale University's School of Art. Her works are featured in permanent collections such as the Brandhorst Collection, Centre Pompidou, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Marieluise Hessel Collection, Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art and Julia Stoschek Collection, and has been awarded by the American Academy in Berlin, Guggenheim Foundation, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and Foundation for Contemporary Arts, among others.