1 A NETWORK OF PEERS

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Solid Air(see below) and the MA Social group are two groups of fellow post graduate students established during the course at Camberwell. Also on the horizon is an exhibition at Copeland Gallery (see below) I am organising with Cathy Hayes all these will give me ample opportunities to exhibit and for the exchange of ideas following the MA course. I also have a small but close knit network in London established before the MA who I am in regular contact with and will also exhibit with.

 

MA Social This is a group of five women from the MA Painting programme. We have met weekly online ever since lockdown and formed a strong bond around the themes of our work and exchange of ideas. We will continue to meet regularly and exhibit together.

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2 EXHIBITING 

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Behind Closed Doors 

Online exhibition10-24 July 2020

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In July I exhibited  Inside Drawing IV with three dimensional form, 2020 in an online group show ‘Behind Closed Doors’. The software used to create it was one of the best packages I have seen. It allowed the visitor to navigate the space and zoom in and out on the work. I had some very interesting feedback on my work that demonstrated that people who do not know my work recognised the themes contained in it. Unfortunately the website is currently being archived so it is not accessible through the link but it will be at a later date Behind Closed Doors. The one disappointment about the show was that like many online exhibition software packages showing three dimensional work is a challenge and they end up looking like a photograph of a 3D work. Knowing this and through conversations with the curator I  selected Inside Drawing IV with three dimensional form, 2020 the least three dimensional of my latest work.

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A couple of examples of feedback on Inside Drawing IV with three dimensional form, 2020:

Overall I sense an energy that is breaking free from constraints - there is a strong spirit struggling and surviving. The knot does not stop the flow.  There is pain within the work It could be seen as a tortured form but it says to me that strength and energy too… M Bennett

 

It’s very powerful and intense, and I admire the way it conveys opposites - strength and fragility, and complexity and transparency, and obstacle and free flow. I’m interested that you have found yourself mixing media  V Hewson

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In November my work will be shown in two exhibitions Per-Spectra which I am organising with Cathy Hayes and Solid Air a group show of 14 Post Graduate Fine Art female artists.

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Per-Spectra (current name but likely to change) 

Copeland Gallery, Peckham, London 

4 -9 November 2020

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The Copeland Gallery Peckham is booked for a group show in November Cathy Hayes and I took on responsibility for this when Sinde Cheung returned to Hong Kong due to the Coronavirus pandemic. 

At the end of Unit 2 the dates had become uncertain due to the COVID-19 but they have now been confirmed by the gallery. It is great to have this lined up and Cathy and I are looking forward to organising its set up. Originally there were 25 participating artists but some have now left the country, so we will have to find new artists to take part or take responsibility for hanging work sent from abroad. There’s a lot of work to do but I am sure it will be a great project to focus on immediately after the end of the MA course together with Solid Air.

 

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Solid Air 

No Format Gallery, Deptford, London

19 -22 November (actual dates to be confirmed)  

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This is group grew out of the Fine Art post-graduate women’s group I started when we were on site at Peckham Road. Excitingly we have morphed into Solid Air the name of the group and our first show together. We have characterised ourselves as follows:

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Solid Air is a bold, new collaboration by fourteen women artists who forged a bond as postgraduates at Camberwell College of Art. The name of their exhibition captures an extraordinary phase in their creative lives. After months working in isolation, Solid Air marks their re-emergence into the world with a group show which celebrates the real, the enduring and the visceral. The work is diverse but unified by a common thread: the power of art at a time of crisis. Some pieces soothe, some disrupt and some ask difficult questions: all of them address the present moment with verve, honesty and clarity. 

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3 STUDIO SPACE AND CONTINUING TO MAKE 

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I have a studio space that I will continue to use but will also pursue opportunities to work in a different location, either to share a studio for a while or by doing a residency.

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I am determined not to let go of the momentum around making that I have enjoyed whilst doing the MA. and already have ideas for my next piece of work which will use the technique of distemper impregnated canvas I have been developing most recently. Realising too how useful I have found it to keep a journal as a method of not only of reflecting on what I am doing but a record of my reflections too. I am considering how I might continue this going forward. It might be written in a note book rather than online and then sketches will be part of it, I am not quite sure yet but certainly for me it seems like a good tool to adopt.

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I will pick up the work I was doing with medical collections in Unit 2 and ensure I maintain contact with the Museum of London link as well as set up a visit  to the Wellcome Collection at the Science Museum which I was poised to do just before the outbreak of Coronavirus in March.

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4 RESEARCH

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Louise Kenward

I intend to extend my contact with Louise Kenward link, artist and writer whose work is also concerned with illness . She has a book coming out in October called ‘Disturbing the Body’ a collection of women’s writing on illness. She and I made contact in Unit 2 and some of my Unit 3 Critical Practice Essay research has grown out of a conversation we had on Zoom in April. We have agreed to meet in person following the end of my MA course. 

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Liz Orton

I am hoping to meet up with Liz Orton artist and lecturer at LCC whose work centres around medical imaging. We were connected through an Academic Support tutor at Camberwell and I have been in touch with her briefly already link.

 

Covid-19

I have several lines of enquiry to follow up on immediately after the MA course a contact at the Wellcome Collection, Euston Road related to my Covid-19 project link.

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Research Funding

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Mark Fairnington’s talk on research funding inspired me to begin some tentative conversations with people about joint projects within the UK.

A greater ambition is to return to the Museo di Palazzo Poggia, a medical collection in Bologna I visited in 2017 and to do some work with their collection. 

 

My intention is to make the most of my knowledge about museum sector acquired from my previous career working in national museums (Senior Designer at the British Museum and Head of Design at the Natural History Museum) to access collections and discuss possible projects.

 

I have enjoyed my MA research an enormous amount and have found the way it has intertwined with my practice very beneficial. This has resulted in me very tentatively thinking about a PhD something I hope to have the opportunity to discuss further before leaving Camberwell.