November's Artist in Residence will be
Alaena Turner:
Alaena Turner: Dear Helen 28cm x 36cm x 3cm. Jesmonite on wood 2025.
I intend to use the residency with The Writer’s Room to develop an installation and new writing to explore the lost artworks of Helen Saunders. Although Saunders was successful in her lifetime and active as a member of the radical Vorticist group, her Vorticist paintings were destroyed when her studio was bombed in the 1940 Blitz and as a result her legacy feels somewhat precarious. Saunder’s own writing practice, such as her poetry and personal letters, and fragmentary written descriptions of her lost paintings and murals, will act as the starting point to try and re-imagine what the lost Vorticist works might have been, perhaps offering a speculative form of archive. Work in progress will be shared during a reading event hosted by Bleet on Mon 17 November and the residency will culminate in an open studio event on Sat 22 November.
Is it possible to collaborate with a historical, deceased artist? What would this mean?
How can you work responsibly with the archive of a past artist?
Do you become a guardian, custodian, champion or are you at risk of distorting the perception of someone else’s work and steering it towards your own interests?
Is it possible that you could actually see or work from another artist’s perspective?
If you immerse yourself in research into another artist’s work and seek to re-imagine lost artworks, what happens to your own artwork and artistic identity?