Join us for an exciting lunchtime screening of new work, OMOS, followed by a Q&A with lead artist Rhys Hollis, chaired by Briana Pegado.
OMOS is a 20-min moving image artwork that pays homage to Scotland’s untold Black history at Stirling Castle, and celebrates Black and Black LGBTQ excellence and performance in Scotland.
The artwork is filmed in Puck’s Glen and Stirling Castle and created collaboratively by a group of award-winning artists; cabaret performer Rhys Hollis (also known as Rhys’ Pieces), mezzo-soprano Andrea Baker, dancer Divine Tasinda and pole artist Kheanna Walker. The film partly follows the format of queer cabaret and each artist has used their unique skills and perspective to create a solo performance for the film.
OMOS is inspired by connections between Puck’s Glen, Stirling Castle and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is also connected to a historical performance given to King James VI of Scotland. At Stirling Castle in 1594, a feared lion was replaced by an unnamed Black man, who pulled a chariot through the castle’s Great Hall. He was one of a number of Black people who appeared in performances at the Scottish court throughout Scottish history. This film is an homage to those people and a celebration of Black performance in Scotland today.
The name OMOS originally was an acronym for the phrase ‘O monstrous! O strange!’, a quote from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As the project developed, this phrase has been morphed to stand for ‘Our Movement, Our Stories’. The film has an ambiguous title of solely ‘OMOS’.
In OMOS the artists occupy space as they both draw on the past and look to the future. The screening will then be followed by a Q&A with lead artist Rhys Hollis, chaired by Briana Pegado.
