10th February – 31st March 2011
110 Petersfield Avenue, Harold Hill, RM3 9PH
As part of her residency, Fran will work to complete a project of her choice in the space. The studio will be open to the public, ensuring a lively and creative atmosphere in the space and the opportunity for the public to get a real insight into her practise. Fran will also provide a number of tutorials to local art students. Students will be able to bring their work to the space and have a one to one slot in which they are able to discuss their piece with a practising artist. Fran will also be providing workshops to the community.
Fran’s work examines the distortion created when something, in particular when someone, is restricted. Her work evokes notions of what it means to feel restricted, if any good can come from it when so often it disfigures (the physical symptom), and why its effects are almost always negative (whether that be physically or emotionally). When an individual life comes into contact with the external, especially our complex social and political environments, a process of distortion takes place.
Fran implements the recreation of this kind of impact by restricting a figure with tape, carving a new shape out of the old by simultaneously disabling, and disfiguring, the figure. This new shape is a grotesque deviation from the one before. The juxtaposition of the natural form, with the tape which bounds it, plays with the larger reality that we are in fact in conflict with the physical and mental compartments of our society. Her work tries to visually reinterpret how she sees different individuals reacting when they cannot freely express themselves, whether physically or emotionally. In her mind all human action, performed within a society, enters into some kind of dialogue and her work plays with this potency of our environments.
Lizzy is an artist whose work often explores niche pastimes, such as going to boot fairs, flower arranging classes and looking at church ruins. She is intrigued by local activities, things that you find out by word of mouth or through a chance encounter in the landscape. These are pastimes, or places, that slip through the net of the usual dissemination of knowledge. Knowledge not passed on through experts and journalists but through a channel that is temporal and by chance.
Lizzy will be involved in researching Harold Hill enabling her to extend her practise and develop links within the community. Her work will be collaborative, involving the local community to form a map of their existence and her interaction with them. The research room will be open to the public, ensuring a lively and creative atmosphere in the space providing the opportunity for the public to interact with Lizzy and see her research develop.
Project Coordinators: Kat Mammone & Sarah Walters