First Thursdays Late Opening 'Is there space for empathy?' at Nunnery Gallery

An after-hours chance to explore Tuomala’s new experience of empathy. Tuomala invites you into a multi-sensory experience of empathy, exploring what visibly – and invisibly – lies in the distances between us.

Weighing around 55kg and made of 100 metres of hand-sewn wire mesh, Tuomala’s new sculptural installation is suspended mid-air, inviting visitors to sit or lie inside, contemplating the questions she poses to us throughout the show: Is there Space for Empathy? Can we re-learn to be physically close? What lives in the invisible spaces between us? What will it take to make us feel safe with each other again? The Nunnery Café will also be open late offering a special evening cocktail menu.

This event is part of ‘Is there space for empathy?’ – an exhibition by Finnish artist Enni-Kukka Tuomala, which examines what empathy means in 2021, in a post-Brexit, post-Covid, post-colonial Britain. Tuomala looks at what role empathy can play in helping us re-enter public life and re-discover physical closeness with each other once again. Her installation makes empathy – an often abstract and intangible feeling – into a physical and tangible form we can see, feel and enter.

#IsThereSpaceForEmpathy?