Photo by Beth MacInnes for We Move in Close Circles

We embroider nonconsensual portraits of institutional leaders.
We give unofficial tours of the unseen spaces of arts venues.
We throw parties in other people’s homes.
We perform fake Chekhov plays.
We listen to demons.

Salamèche is an arts collective based in Nottingham and London, currently composed of Rohanne Udall and Paul Paschal.

Trained in visual arts, dance and philosophy, we work with many different materials and processes: performance, video, printmaking, sculpture, radio broadcasts, publication, workshops and curation. We started making work together as clowns: rather than regarding the artistic encounter as harmonious exchange between artist and audience, we instead welcome the unavoidable presence of expectation, uncertainty, betrayal, and surprise.

Our projects develop slowly. We often collaborate, and value processes that challenge and stretch us. We are interested in when seemingly-innocuous materials can give rise to potent tensions and pleasures. The resulting work tends to feel bright, precise, subversive, and charming.

Our audiences are met with apparently simple propositions, which pursue seductive logics to riotous ends. Each project stages a particular crisis of relation: honing in on and troubling a different aspect of how we encounter and attempt to live with one another. Overwhelming yet compelling, our work’s careful instabilities invite our audience to rethink and reshape the world around them.

Sometimes we set up our own things and sometimes we work in institutions. We seek out and contribute to cultures of invitation, playfulness and thought. Our current interests include: hosting, in/sincerity, ugliness, DIY publishing.

Our work has been developed within and presented across major stages, galleries, arts centers and festivals in the UK and beyond. We have presented performances at Rich Mix (2018), Nottdance (2019), Manchester Art Gallery (2021) and Rammel Club (2024); and mounted solo exhibitions at Forth (2019) and Gasleak Mountain (2023). We have been awarded commissions from David Roberts Art Foundation (2018), the Live Art Development Agency (2019), Siobhan Davies Studios (2021) and a-n & Primary (2023); and undertaken residencies at Hospitalfield Arts (2016), PACT Zollverein (2019) and S’ALA (2022). We have also run an independent radio station, extensively toured a performance across people’s homes, and regularly host platforms for artists to exchange practice.

Current and regular collaborators include: Shivaangee Agrawal, Sepideh Ardalani, Megan Arnold, Laura Burns, George Chinnery, Paud Condron, Jane Francis Dunlop, Fionn Duffy, Andy Grace Edwards, Bahar Fattahi, Alex Fernandes, Gasleak Mountain, Anna Fennel Hughes, Mira Kautto, Ash Kilmartin, Amy Lawrence, Cannach MacBride, Hamish MacPherson, D Mortimer, Sam Pardes, Lara Pawson, Orley Quick, Rajni Shah, Anastasia Shin, Eunji Sung, Rebecca Wigmore, and Jemima Yong.

You can email us at rohanneudall[at]me[dot]com and p[dot]hughespaul[at]gmail[dot]com.