Monday 11 September - Thursday 5 October
Official launch night: Saturday 16th September 5-7pm
Civic Skateboarding programme for Leeds 2023: September 16th & 17th here
Featuring Rojoni Ahmad, Ryoko Akama, Sam Barrett, Jazz Brown, Myles Dove, Connie Gascoyne, Taro Gent, James Lewis, Sam Liddle, Al Lovell, Jasmine Lowe, Zainab Nadeem, Ruby Penson, Alexander Prince, George Rimmington, Abi Townsend, Joe Winters, George Worral and many more.
Curated by Lauren Mudge and Hilda Quick
Taking its name from the 1927 essay Street Haunting by Virginia Woolf that poetically reflects on the way cities shape us as humans, this exhibition considers how the act of “street skating” might shape its participants as artists. With an extremely diverse range of mediums including painting, sculpture, photography, music, fashion, tattoos – even shoemaking – the one thing that all the artists have in common is that they are members of the Leeds skateboard community.
Skateboarders routinely scour our city streets, searching for new and imaginative ways to skate even the most mundane bits of metal or stone, but in the process, often interact with a wide cross-section of society. They commonly share public spaces with the unhoused, the vulnerable, sometimes the violent, and have to face both public mockery, expulsion by security guards, and for the growing number of female and gender minority skateboarders – the male gaze. These experiences equip the skateboarder with a uniquely street-level view of the world that often impacts how they think creatively.
You will rarely find a skateboarder who does not have at least one other form of creative pursuit, nor will you find an art school without skateboarders within it. Though a creative act in and of itself, skateboarding also has a rich culture of filmmaking, photography, fashion, writing, music, architecture and illustration which provides a rich education enabling many skateboarders to pursue careers in all sorts of creative fields. Street Haunting provides a unique survey of recent works by a wide range of Leeds’ skateboarding creatives, and is accompanied by an essay by writer and skateboarder Jono Coote.
Street Haunting is part of the Civic Skateboarding festival produced by artist Harry Meadley for Leeds 2023. At its core, Civic Skateboarding is about forming better relationships between skateboarders and Leeds’ civic and cultural institutions in order to help better protect one another. It has been co-created, co-curated, and co-skated by many members of the Leeds skateboard community.
Lauren Mudge recently graduated from MA Curation Practices at Leeds Arts University. Often working with photography and zine making, recent projects include Through the Viewfinder, a co-created project with gender minority skateboarders, as well as multiple publications in collaboration with Rolling With The Girls.
Hilda Quick is a curator and skateboard filmmaker who studied Photography at Leeds Arts University. Quick’s video series Drafts, which features many prominent female skateboarders,will premiere its third volume as part of the Civic Skateboarding screening event at Leeds Playhouse on 16 September 2023.