Jess Heritage

twofold

July 19th - 30th August

Messages never settle, instead they wander off, they shiver. They blow about like a draft through an open window.

twofold is a site specific installation in which the windows of m2 gallery are whitewashed with emulsion. The gesture of whitewashing both disguises the preparatory stages of a space undergoing change, whilst simultaneously becoming a signal towards an interior which is caught in a state between done and undone.

Within twofold, the windows, clouded with white emulsion, become a vehicle for wavering typography that stutters from one pane to the next. The divisions of the windows act as an interruption, a hesitation in the message, which refuses to wholly settle.

Jess Heritage (b.1993, Pontefract) works predominantly with speech and performance.

The work often begins in the middle; a conversation already underway, or just out of earshot. Performances tend to circle around doubt and indeterminacy, producing registers of speech which falter, defer, or fail to wholly arrive. Her performances seek to make visible what is produced in the gaps and slippages that open up in communication; attempting to continually make present and undermine the often unacknowledged dominant structures inherent to language.

She often works with modest materials, building stripped-back and provisional architectural structures which exist in states of assembly or disassembly. These structures, like her register of speech, are understated and continually unresolved.

Jess graduated with an MA in Fine Art Media from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2025, and with a BA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins in 2017. She was the recipient of The Perimeter Studio Award 2025, The Sarabande Foundation Scholarship 2023, and the Acme ASP studio award 2017-2019. Recent exhibitions include [sic] at Metroland Cultures, Between States at Chilli Art Projects and Same as it ever was at ANNEX at the Koppel Project.

https://www.jessheritage.com/
https://www.instagram.com/jess_heritage/