In November 2025 we hosted Elaborate at Toynbee Studios – a day to engage with emerging artistic voices, connect with peers in the performance sector, and experience new work shaped through the Artsadmin Lab programme.
Elaborate featured an afternoon of artist sharings, where a small audience saw early-stage ideas in development and offered feedback through supportive conversations with lab artists, Artsadmin staff and the sector. The audience were also invited to see installation pieces.
About the artists
James Gallego Olivo is a movement practitioner and dancer based in London, who currently lectures at the London Contemporary Dance School. His work and research are heavily influenced by Hip Hop, which he blends with contemporary references and improvisation. He has worked with a variety of dance, theatre and film choreographers and directors including Jasmin Vardimon, Akram Khan, Hannes Langolf, Joan Clevillé, James Cousins, Jess & Morgs Films, Alleyne Dance, Antler Theatre, Company Nil, Frauke Requardt/David Rosenberg, Jason Mabana, and BULLYACHE.
@jameywamey
Peyvand Sadeghian and Matthew Robinson are two mid-career, neurodivergent artists and the co-creators of Apolune: Systems Normal. Their collaboration transforms NASA’s Apollo 11 archives into a multidisciplinary performance-installation. Sadeghian’s interdisciplinary performance, which reframes institutional documents, merges with Robinson’s innovative docu-installations using responsive projections. Together, they critique dominant historical narratives, unearthing the fragile humanity buried within institutional records. The result is a sensory-rich encounter that champions their unique vantage point as a source of artistic innovation.
Peyvand Sadeghian and Matthew Robinson used their Artsadmin Lab residency to structure their project, Apolune: Systems Normal. They developed a sustainable way of working together that supported their individual access needs as interdisciplinary artists. This allowed them to focus on the project’s creative challenges: defining how the visual arts installation and the live performance elements would connect. By physically mapping out the piece, they progressed the work towards a confirmed 2026 exhibition. The residency was also their first opportunity to work with Artsadmin and benefit from their expertise in producing experimental, cross-form work.
Sara Rahman (Sarah Ourahmane) is a British Algerian musician, composer, sound-artist and researcher. Her practice spans classical contemporary composition, electronic music, performance, and improvisation as a vocalist and cellist. Engaging with the intersections of sonic anthropology, research and performance, she explores the gaps between tradition and ritual in authoritarianism contexts. Her works have been released on 3024 and commissioned by BBC, Sound and Music, the British Music Collection, Sculpture International Rotterdam and she has exhibited at Forma Arts Media, Somerset House, MACBA, Barcelona and worked on exhibitions at the Castello di Rivoli and OGR, Turin
@cldhoney
zack mennell (b. 1994, Hornchurch UK) is a self-taught emerging artist using writing, photography and performance to explore queerness and neurodiversity in relation to presence and visibility. zack frequently collaborates with performance artist Martin O’Brien performing throughout the UK and in Europe. zack has regularly works documenting performance and live events through photography. Their photographic practice is strictly analogue. “Artistic expression is, for me, a way to make sense of the world and an attempt to contextualise who I am within it. In stepping into difficulty and pain through artmaking, I attempt to understand life through a different register to that of daily survival. I want my work to have an uncanny quality, that it might temporarily unsettle familiar places, making visible some of the strange aspects and tensions embedded there.” In 2022, they presented the first iteration of their ongoing project ‘(para)site’ at VSSL Studio during Totally Thames Festival and Deptford X. Originally commissioned by Thames Festival Trust, ‘(para)site’ explores post-industrial ecologies & toxic representations of disability & working class identity. The project continues this Autumn with a new film made in the Thames Estuary, supported by ACE. In 2023, zack received a DYCP grant to explore sustainable & alternative photographic dark room techniques. A series of photographic works, made in collaboration with performance artist Martin O’Brien, was exhibited by Future Ritual in 2024. Their most recent performance work ‘Rage Reactor’, entwining the ecological impact of the civil nuclear industry with the complex legacy of ‘nuclear’ family structures, was commissioned by DaDaFest international, and supported by Duckie, Metal Liverpool and ACE. zack is a member of the GLA Liberty Advisary Group, a 2025 British Council Venice Biennale Fellow, and a studio holder at Triangle LGBTQ+ Cultural Centre. They are a member of the TOMA (The Other MA) 2024/25 cohort, an alternative MFA based in Southend-on-Sea.
@zackmennell