Horniman Museum Arts Fellowship
Tea’s Times: Hospitality and Time-Based Practice

Drawing a connection between the development of photography and the retail of Horniman’s Tea (both 1826), the Tea’s Times project uses photography, film and performance in ways which consider tea as a cultural practice. Tea gives us a way to spend time, to stop, look, and share times passing. If tea marks a social time, photography is its equivalent as a method for recording time spent together. Through practices of nurture, listening and hospitality this project proposes not ‘the story’ but ‘stories’ of tea as a social and collaborative process. It will think tea through its ‘breaks’, ‘parties’, ‘ceremonies’, habits, rituals and forms of gift exchange.

UAL, BA (Hons) Fine Art Photography Course Leader Maia Conran and invited UAL researchers including Duncan Wooldridge and Smriti Mehra will incorporate the public as co-researchers through a series of encounters at the Museum. Engaging with the Horniman’s collection, organising public workshops, and hosting a symposium, the project will draw out relationships between photography, tea and time. This will take place in dialogue with the Horniman Museum and Garden’s茶, चाय, Tea Exhibition in 2023/24, which will directly address the decolonising aspirations of the Museum’s re-set agenda to facilitate conversations about our imperial past.

Links:
Tea’s Times Confrence - 14th and 15th March 2024
Tea’s Times Conference open call
Tea’s Times Exhibition
茶, चाय, Tea Exhibition
Tea Project Horniman Museum