Glasshouse Residencies
16 May to 19 September 2017
ESP and The New Art Gallery Walsall (TNAGW) are working in partnership to offer Glasshouse, two opportunities for artists to spend time in residence in the Artist’s Studio at TNAGW. Glasshouse aims to provide artists with resources to develop new work for public presentation within a mutually supportive group context, and supports artists and arts organisations to initiate and build long-term working relationships.
The Artist’s Studio at TNAGW connects to the rest of the building via a large glass window, which allows visitors to see practitioners at work, offering an interesting opportunity to work in public. Building on previous Group Occupation projects, residents will work individually but collaborate as a group on the final presentation. The selected artists will work together towards a public presentation to be viewed through the studio window space at TNAGW during the month following their residency.
Residency 1: 16 May – 11 June
Alice Gale-Feeny (ESP member), Joe Fletcher Orr (Bluecoat Affiliate) and Bryony Gillard (Spike Associate). This residency is has been developed in partnership with Spike Island (Bristol) and Bluecoat (Liverpool).
Residency 2: 5 July – 22 August
James Lomax and Tom Verity (both ESP members)
In both cases artists will work towards a presentation to be viewed through the studio window space at TNAGW during the month following their residency.
Alice Gale-Feeny
Alice Gale-Feeny uses video, performance, writing and found objects to investigate and relay direct moments of contact, discovery and understanding between the body, objects and architecture. Her work is the result of a receptivity to the situation she finds herself in, taking an interest in what exists ‘as it is’ rather than something else that is outside of her encounter. Gale-Feeny often uses direct translations from unscripted voice (her own voice, or the voices of groups of individuals framed within a particular scenario) as a device for exploring our experience of things, as it unfolds in real-time.
During the Glasshouse residency Gale-Feeny will continue to develop ideas around how space is shared and understood, from the perspective of the individual as well as the group. The situation of the group residency; sharing The Artist’s Studio; and in turn the building that contains the artists and audiences, will be used by the artist as a case study.
Alice Gale-Feeny (b. 1989 Brighton) gained her BA Hons in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University in 2012. Solo exhibitions include: ‘Getting to know’, Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery, 2016-17; ’Close Attention’, Space One, Seoul, South Korea, 2015, and ‘HairWashCarWash’, Two Queens, Leicester, 2014. Select residencies and awards include: STORE, unfixed location, London 2015-16; Testing Ground: The Masterclass, Zabludowicz Collection, London, 2013. Select group exhibitions and screenings include ‘Steppes’, Two Queens, Leicester, 2017; ‘Sunscreen’, a commission for EM15 at the 56th Venice Biennale, curated by Candice Jacobs, 2016; ‘RoCH Fans & Legends’, QUAD, Derby, 2015; ‘Playing with Space’, curated by Laurence Bradby, various locations, 2015; ‘FOAM’, curated by Matt Jenner, ATTIC, One Thoresby Street, Nottingham 2014; ‘Appropriate Response – New Artist Moving Image’, Zabludowicz Collection, London, 2014; ‘Cultural Embassies’, Vetrinj Mansion, Maribor, Slovenia, 2012. Curatorial projects include: ‘Ground’, co-curated with Oliver Tirré, Turf Projects, Croydon, 2016 and ATTIC, One Thoresby Street, Nottingham, 2015.
Bryony Gillard
Bryony Gillard is an artist and curator based in Bristol. Her work is situated between writing, performance, sound and exhibition making. Often exploring margin and periphery, amateur or outsider, her research based practice draws on the notion of ‘constant revision’ — states of being in which structures or ideas can be subverted, dissolved or questioned. Bryony is currently developing a new body of work exploring relationships between alterity, female experience, retreat and resistance. She will use the Glasshouse residency to focus on improvisation, movement and choreography, working in collaboration with local dance practitioners and performers.
Bryony is the 2017 Winner of the Peninsula Arts Film Prize. Forthcoming projects include a solo exhibition at Turf Projects (2018) and recent projects include Surface Contact – Exeter Phoenix, C~C – Tate St Ives, Molecular Revolutions – Casa de Pova, São Paulo, To Make a Work – Upominki, Rotterdam. She has an MFA from the Dutch Art Institute, School for Art Praxis and was Associate Curator at Arnolfini from 2015-16.
James Lomax
A motif of reflected water and use of venetian blinds has featured in James Lomax’s recent work, as he’s fascinated with the way both reveal and hide objects in equal measure. Lomax has identified this as a specific area of research that he will explore further during the residency, working to distinguish how and where it relates to the rest of his practice. Lomax will use the single viewpoint and total control of the viewers’ gaze in the Artists’ Studio at The New Art Gallery Walsall as an engine from which to form this research. He plans to create and play with assemblages which confront the viewer, using them to define a physical space and combining them with the idea of revealing/concealing to build a narrative around the work.
James Lomax graduated from the Ruskin School of Art in 2013 and came to Birmingham as the graduate artist in residence at The Lombard Method. Lomax was awarded a Sky Academy Arts Scholarship in 2014 and is now based at Studio Capri, Birmingham.
Joe Fletcher Orr
Joe Fletcher Orr’s sculptures, performances and installations use humour to undermine the ‘seriousness’ of the art world, and the authority of the art object. Orr traces his willingness to poke fun at his own work and contemporary art to visits he made with his father to art galleries as a young boy, when he would be encouraged to laugh at many of the works on display. During the residency Orr will research ideas of family, love and relationships, and hopes for the new work to be heavily influenced by new relationships that will form during the residency. The residency will give him the time and resources to focus in the studio without distraction.
Tom Verity
Tom Verity’s work explores a variety of everyday materials and objects through mixed media sculpture and compositions. A large portion of his work comprises ropes and weights which are used to display balance, tension, gravity and trapped material. He uses rope in these works both as functional building material and as a tool for drawing, mimicking the painted line. Verity’s use of weights adds a constantly active factor to the work that he uses often to trap objects, fixing their positions as in a still life.
During his Glasshouse residency Verity will continue exploring his practice through testing innovative ways of engaging visitors to the gallery through the Artist’s Studio window. He’s excited by the discursive aspect of the project, the opportunity to work with the other residency artists and will be exploring Walsall to find inspiration for his artwork.
Tom Verity graduated from Camberwell College of Art in 2016. His recent projects include the Graduate Residency at AirSpace gallery, Stoke-on-Trent and the Gilfelag Residency, Iceland. His work is part of the Ingram Collection and he has been selected for this years Mostyn Open 20 exhibition.
