ZING Monthly Social: While We Slumber Special

Join us for our monthly evening social at God’s House Tower (GHT), a relaxed opportunity to explore the building after hours in a calm and welcoming atmosphere.

For this special social, ZING Co-ordinator lucie smith will lead a workshop exploring the ideas behind the current commission and exhibition at God’s House Tower, While We Slumber by Kitt. The workshop will draw particular attention to the idea of 'emotional heritage' held within buildings, places, and people; a notion which underpins both Kitt and lucie's respective research and artistic practices.

The GHT café and bar will be open throughout the evening serving drinks and, alongside the workshop, you’re invited to wander the exhibitions, meet artists, learn more about ZING, or take part in a life drawing session (life drawing is ticketed and must be booked in advance via this link: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/zestcollective/2014475)

Come to make, chat, or simply look around and connect with Southampton’s creative community. You don’t need to be a ZING member to attend, everyone is very welcome.

About the exhibition

While We Slumber by Kitt (A.K.A. Lady Kitt) is an exhibition commissioned by ‘a space’ arts for God’s House Tower.

The exhibition begins with a simple question: what do we really share when we sleep in close proximity? Drawing on the familiar rituals of sleepovers – midnight feasts, whispered conversations, star-gazing, makeshift forts and sleeping bag stair toboggans – Kitt explores how social sleeping can deepen emotional connection and reshape our understanding of care, intimacy and belonging.

Central to Kitt’s research is the idea of ‘emotional heritage’: the way feelings accumulate within buildings, and how they are shaped, shared, and passed on through the communities who inhabit them. At God’s House Tower, this inheritance is layered and complex. Through archival and site-based research, Kitt traces a history of communal slumber within the building – from incarceration in the 1700s and 1800s, to more recent events such as artist residencies and a 24 hour ukulele jam.

While We Slumber invites audiences to consider (and experience) how social sleeping might alter our relationship to shared spaces and to one another. Through this lens, the exhibition becomes a reflective, sensory exploration of how buildings remember, and how those memories are shaped and reshaped through collective acts of being together in vulnerability and rest.

Find out more about the exhibition

See other events associated with While We Slumber

About lucie

lucie smith is a conceptual artist based in southampton, uk, working across sculpture, installation, drawing, sonic and lens-based media. she creates symbolic, materially driven works that explore lost voices, fragmented histories and the emotion of place, through themes of wounding and reclamation. her current research centres on matrilineal heritage, ecological and archaeological feminism, and the esoteric.

alongside her practice, lucie works as a self-employed arts educator and producer, working with communities, individuals, and organisations to facilitate art-heritage-ecology-centred workshops and events.

lucie completed her BA in fine at arts university plymouth, graduating with first class honours in 2021. she is currently completing her postgraduate MA in contemporary art and archaeology with the university of the highlands and islands, orkney.

lucie is a member of the southampton-based art collective ZEST and coordinator of their wider artist network ZING whereby she regularly facilitates life drawing classes and networking events for the artist community in southampton. 

find out more about lucie's practice