Future Ritual is a practice of gathering, curating and organising. We collaborate with artists to create contemporary expressions of ritual, working to support the emergence of new and more attuned cultures. 

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Martin O’Brien and zack mennell, WHISTLING AS THE NIGHT CALLS, 2024. VSSL studio. Photo by Marco Berardi.

Martin  O’Brien & zack mennell

WHISTLING AS THE NIGHT CALLS
31.10 - 01.12.2024 at VSSL studio

WHISTLING AS THE NIGHT CALLS is an exhibition of collaborative photographic works by zack mennell and Martin O'Brien. Shot on 35mm Cinestill 800T, the images document a series of performance actions which haunt the wind-swept skeletal remains of sites of worship and pilgrimage.

Footsteps are heard on the stairs, but no one is seen descending. Glasses fall in the kitchen and smash over the floor as if they had jumped themselves. The word ‘fading’ is written on the walls in blood or red paint. The wails of the dead can be heard by the living, and the horrors of life are visible to those who no longer endure it. People once walked these halls. Unholy sounds ring out into the night.

Locations included the shingle beach of Dungeness, historic churches in Romney Marsh and St Peter’s Seminary, a derelict brutalist college for priests in Cardross, Scotland.

For these new photographs, which extend from their performance making and documentary practices, the pair exhumed strange actions from O'Brien's body of work, situating them amidst the ruins, performing for ghosts and searching for more-than-human presences through mennell's photochemical process. 

Historically, some artists working in time-based media expressed an anxiety about photographic documentation, concerned that the image codified ephemeral live art into a final, essential shape - an afterlife, a tomb. 

In seeking the witness of the lost, the forgotten, the quick and the dead, these works by mennell and O’Brien present an alternative perspective on memory, loss and finitude.

WHISTLING AS THE NIGHT CALLS marks a decade of collaboration and shared practice between mennell and O’Brien, wherein mennell has witnessed, documented, facilitated and performed in many of O'Brien's live works. This show is the first exhibition of their collaborative photographs.
WHISTLING AS THE NIGHT CALLS was offered as part of CEREMONY, a year-long programme of performances, exhibitions, artist labs and workshops exploring the function of performance as a modality for gathering, ritual and ceremony amidst the fragmentation of contemporary life. 

The exhibition was produced in partnership with VSSL studio. The CEREMONY programme was supported with public funds by Arts Council England.


Artist Index: zack mennell
Artist Index: Martin O’Brien




Public Programme

O’Brien and mennell held an in conversation, chaired by Regina Agard Brathwaite on 01.12.2025. Full video documentation of that event is available in our CEREMONY: Knowledge Archive.








Martin O’Brien and zack mennell, WHISTLING AS THE NIGHT CALLS, 2024. VSSL studio. Photo by Marco Berardi.