Acclaimed artist to host show in Perth as part of sports event

An award-winning artist, known for her dramatic photographs of gymnasts, will host a solo exhibition in Perth next month as part of this year’s European Sports Championships. London-based Jo Longhurst, a former artist-in-residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario, will bring her project New Order, Other Spaces to Perth Concert Hall and Perth Theatre. The exhibition will be curated by Horsecross Arts’ Tiffany Boyle and Ilyana Nedkova and it will look at gymnasts’ body shapes and manoeuvres through photography and moving images. The newly commissioned exhibition will be presented simultaneously at Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall Ballroom. A Horsecross Arts spokeswoman said: “Jo is internationally recognised for her explorations of cultural ideas of perfection through photography, video, performance and installation. “She is drawn to human systems and structures, interested in attempts to create order from disorder, and the many ways in which we try to make sense of our place in the universe.” She added: “Jo often returns to the question of how we as individuals learn to be in the world: how we are judged, shaped, or affected by our social and political environment, and how we are expected to ‘fit in’ or conform. New Order, Other Spaces engages with ideas of perfection, gender, gesture, and inter-generational understandings of movement. The Perth display will run from August 2 to 22. The exhibition will be part of the cultural programme accompanying the inaugural 2018 European Sports Championships in Glasgow.