An evening of performances with Joanna Penso, Frankie Fathers and Vibin n Marblin
Thursday 28th August 2025 , 6:00pm to 9:00pm
A night to feel, witness, and rediscover connections – featuring live performances Body Talks (2025) by Joanna Penso, Why don’t you remember? (2025) by Frankie Fathers, and Water Ripple Swan Gate (2025) by Vibin n Marblin.
This special evening will start with Joanna’s Body Talks (2025), which explores a ‘turning in’ to oneself and those around us via live body amplification. An absurd amount of cables are wrapped around the body, meeting at a central ‘umbilical cord’, the length of which denotes the performance area. This piece comes to a crescendo when the performer attempts to dance to the sound of her own heartbeat; the more she dances, the quicker her pulse races.
We will then witness Frankie to activate her installation about her father Michael who has Alzheimer’s disease, with Why don’t you remember? (2025), a performance that explores the emotional complexities of being a caregiver. She repeats the same question, reflecting on how her father asks her the same question over and over again due to the lack of short-term memory. Her emotions veer from annoyance to sadness, to love, to guilt.
Lastly, Vibin n Marblin will present Water Ripple Swan Gate (2025), a live audiovisual performance inspired by footage of water rippling in the waterways of Thamesmead. They bring live marbling, drawn animation, and pre-recorded footage into dialogue with live vibraphone-playing, electronic and aquatic sounds. This is improvisation as structure in motion – an unfolding exchange where moments coalesce, dissolve, and reconfigure.
This event will take place in the Nunnery Gallery, 181 Bow Road, London, E3 2SJ. Doors will open at 6pm, with the performances running from 7pm to 8:30pm. The Nunnery Café will be open from 6pm-9pm, selling their usual fare of delicious drinks and snacks.
This event is part of the Bow Open Public Programme.
Concession rate applies to students, over 65s, under 18s, Bow Arts artists, National Art Pass members, and key workers.
More about Joanna Penso
Joanna Penson is an artist working with sound-led experiments to explore our relationship to ourselves, to one another and to our environment using methods of body amplification. Her work aims to challenge the barriers to human connection through tools of absurdity and relational gestures, focusing on the powerful employment of bodily sounds as artistic material. Everyone has a heart that beats, a gut that rumbles and joints that click; this point of commonality is important to her practice, a reminder of our humanity. She works with live performances, sonic films, workshops, sound installations and radio programmes.
More about Frankie Fathers
Frankie Fathers is a London-based multidisciplinary artist whose work spans installation, sculpture, and film, exploring themes of identity, myth, and loss. She primarily uses textiles to engage with these ideas, offering a feminist and absurdist perspective. Her practice is both playful and profound, flippant and forceful, creating a visual language that balances the familiar with the fantastical. These dualities invite reflection on gender, power, and myth. Recently, however, her art has become deeply personal as she navigates the emotional complexities of caring for her father, Michael, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2021.
This transition into caregiving has significantly shaped the artist’s practice, forcing her to grapple with the emotions tied to caring for a loved one whose memory and identity are fading. It has challenged her understanding of memory, loss, and care, prompting her to explore these themes through her work. The act of making has become a way for the artist to articulate the frustration and helplessness she experiences as a caregiver.
More about Vibin n Marblin
Vibin n Marblin are visual artist Chloe Cooper and composer Jackie Walduck. Jackie creates mesmeric soundscapes in real time using her vibraphone and live electronics. Chloe drops inks onto a watery surface creating patterns that she mixes live with drawn animations. Together they’ve created an improvisation-based practice where Chloe’s marbling responds to Jackie’s music and vice versa, resulting in immersive video projections and mesmeric vibraphone soundscapes. This dialogical approach sparks fresh associations between visual and audio perceptions and inspires the emotions connected with present-centred consciousness.
Access information
The Nunnery Gallery has step-free access throughout from street level, including to the accessible toilet, and is service animal friendly. This venue does not have a hearing loop system. Accessible parking is not available on-site.
If you have any questions regarding accessibility at this venue or event, would like to make us aware of any access requirements that you have in advance of visiting, or would like this information in an alternate format including Easy Read, please email nunnery@bowarts.com or call 020 8980 7774 (Ext. 3)
Access requirements could include things like providing equipment, services or support (e.g. information in Easy Read, speech to text software, additional 1:1 support), adjusting workshop timings (e.g. more break times), adjustments to the event space (e.g. making sure you have a seat near the entrance) or anything else you can think of!
Transport Information
Address: Nunnery Gallery, 181 Bow Road, London, E3 2SJ
Nearest station(s): Bow Road (District and Hammersmith and City lines) is a 6-minute walk away, and Bow Church (DLR) is a 3-minute walk away.
Bus: 205, 25, 425, A8, D8, 108, 276, 488 and 8 all service the surrounding area.
Bike: Bicycle parking is located at Bow Church Station. The nearest Santander Cycles docking station is at Bow Church Station.
About the Bow Open
The Bow Open is Bow Arts’ annual exhibition of astonishing artwork created exclusively by our Studio Holders, Affordable Housing residents, and Artist Educators. Every year, a different guest curator is invited to select the work. For our 30th anniversary we have three guest curators; Bobby Baker, Albert Potrony, and Nye Thompson have each had a studio with Bow Arts so bring an embedded insight and commitment to the selection process in this special year. This year, 22 artists explore the ties that bind and divide, responding to the theme of ‘Connections’.
Find out more about the exhibition here.
