A collaboration between

Dancers: Naomi Annand and Nandita Shankardass
Musicians: Tara Franks and Preetha Narayanan
Music: Beyond Breath Balladeste
Set and Floristry: Katie Smyth
Film: Aloha Bonser Shaw
Dresses: Toast
Artwork: Charcoal Art Club

All(i)um is a conversation at its core.

Born out of an interest to explore our life cycle and the process every living being goes through from sprouting seed to eventually resting back in the earth.

We started this collaboration at the end of lockdown, probably out of a unconscious need to create again with others along with a want to connect to ideas around the cycle of life after feeling so stalled in the years previous. It began as a simple conversation between Aloha Shaw, Katie Smyth, Naomi Annand, Nandita Shankardass, Tara Franks and Preetha Narayanan. All artists working in different disciplines. Each responded to the subject in their own way coming together to create this piece expressing their own thoughts and feelings through their various creative practices.

The seemingly mundane onion became a fitting object which was used to look at these ideas further. The onion provokes visceral reactions. It’s one of the most ancient food sources but still humble. By asking questions about skin, roots, core, layers, buds, flowering, seed and growing we started to learn a lot about ourselves, life and our world. During the process we connected with the Charcoal Art  Club, who brought women together to draw during the pandemic and created the drawings featured in the film.

This piece is part of a now ongoing conversation which examines life using the resilient onion in different ways as a tool for exploration.