Cell Project Space In Dialogue: Orchard Documents

with Richard Birkett, Patricia L. Boyd, and Ghislaine Leung, moderated by Saim Demircan

No Show Space is pleased to host Cell Project Space event - In Dialogue: Orchard Documents at 39 Temple Street, London E2 6QQ

RSVP here, limited capacity

Text by Cell Project Space

Jeff Preiss’s Orchard Documents challenge the way in which exhibition histories are told, and by whom. Rather than strictly documenting Orchard Gallery’s programme, the filmmaker’s experimental film collaborations expand the exhibition as a medium for generating new material. Taking the Orchard Documents as a starting point, this discussion centres around ways in which we see artworks and exhibitions as a historical record of a specific time and place now often experienced firsthand as an image.

Join curator Richard Birkett and artists Patricia L. Boyd and Ghislaine Leung as they discuss the Orchard Documents through the lens of their own practices and interests in exhibition and institution-making, labour power, psychoanalysis, and structural film. 

The exhibition’s curator, Saim Demircan, will introduce the Orchard Documents in relation to Orchard gallery and its past activities, and consider its significance today within a cultural landscape shaped by high rents, market dependency, and the appropriation of DIY aesthetics.

Richard Birkett is a curator, writer and PhD candidate at University College London. He was Festival Director of Glasgow International (2022–2025), Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London (2017–2020), and curator at Artists Space, New York (2010–2016). Birkett also co-ran the non-profit gallery Whitechapel Project Space 2001-2007. Notable curatorial projects at the ICA included 'Cameron Rowland: 3 & 4 Will. IV c. 73' (2020), 'Metahaven: EURASIA'(2019), 'Counter Investigations: Forensic Architecture' (2018), and a retrospective of artist Julie Becker. At Artists Space, he curated exhibitions with artists including Hito Steyerl, Laura Poitras, Bernadette Corporation, Lukas Duwenhögger and Union Gaucha Productions as well as 'Frozen Lakes' (2013) and 'Radical Localism: Art, Video and Culture from Pueblo Nuevo’s Mexicali Rose' (2012). His other curatorial projects include 'and Materials and Money and Crisis' at mumok, Vienna (2013), and 'Terry Atkinson' at Yale Union, Portland (2014). He has edited several publications, including 'Cosey Complex'(2012), 'Bernadette Corporation: 2000 Wasted Years' (2013) and 'Tell It To My Heart: Collected by Julie Ault' (2015). He is the author of 'Donald Rodney: Autoicon' (Afterall Books, 2022). 

Patricia L. Boyd is an artist who lives and works in London. Her solo exhibitions include 'Contents in the Storage Problem', Heidi, Berlin (2025); 'A Sort of Carbon Paper', Rob Tufnell, London, 'New Carbon Works', Good Weather, Chicago (2024); 'Where You Lie', Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York (2023); 'Ceiling Analysis', Secession, Vienna (2022); 'Hold', Kunstverein München (2021); and 'Me, not, not-me, Front Desk Apparatus', New York (2020). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach (2026), Museion, Bolzano (2025), the 13th Gothenburg Biennial (2025), Kunstverein Düsseldorf (2024); Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (2024); the Taipei Biennial (2023); Amant Foundation, New York (2022); Kunstverein Braunschweig (2021); and Secession, Vienna (2018), among others. In 2019, she presented 'Joins', a collaborative exhibition with Rosa Aiello, at Cell Project Space, London. Boyd has published an artist’s book, 'Ceiling Blues', with Revolver Publishing. 

Ghislaine Leung is an artist who lives and works in London. Her solo exhibitions include 'Reproductions', n.b.k., Berlin, and Cabinet, London (2025); 'Commitments', Kunsthalle Basel, and 'Holdings', Renaissance Society, Chicago (2024); 'Fountains', Simian, Copenhagen (2023); 'Balances', Maxwell Graham, New York, and STANDARDS, Ivory Tars, Glasgow (2022); 'SCORES', Ordet, Milan, and PORTRAITS, Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach (2021); and 'Constitution', Chisenhale Gallery, London, and Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (2019) 'The Moves', Cell Project Space (2018). Her work has also been included in group exhibitions at the Julia Stoschek Foundation, Berlin; Kunsthal Mechelen, Belgium; FRAC Lorraine, Metz; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland; HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, Graz; A Tale of a Tub, Rotterdam; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; WIELS, Brussels; Camden Art Centre, London; and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2023. 

Saim Demircan is curator, writer and PhD candidate at Kingston School of Art. He is currently Artistic Director of INCURVA in Trapani, Sicily where he has curated the shows 'Jason Hirata, Park McArthur: Lot C' (2026), 'Yvo Cho: The brain is not a ready–made machine' (2025) and the group show, 'I Ciclopi (Eye, Camera, Myth)' (2026). Other recent curatorial projects include 'Malcolm Mooney, Can Yoo Doo Right' at Galerie Max Mayer, Düsseldorf (2023-4); Fausto Melotti, Theatre at Hauser & Wirth, London (2022); Exhibition as Image at 80WSE, NYC (2020-21), and Stephan Dillemuth, Diskodekorationen: From Another Century at Le Bourgeois, London (2019). Demircan was the 2017 recipient of the Goethe Institut New York’s curatorial residency program, Ludlow 38 in New York City, and between 2012 and 2015, a curator at Kunstverein München in Munich, Germany. Previously, he curated a two-year program of off-site projects at Focal Point Gallery in Southend-on-Sea as well as an exhibition of work by Kai Althoff.

The discussion will last around 2 hours, followed by an audience Q&A. For full details about access follow the link here.

For all press and access related inquiries, please contact Michelle L. Johnson: michelle[at]cellprojects[dot]org. This event has been organised in conjunction with Jeff Preiss, Orchard Documents at Cell Project Space, running until 13th December 2026.