Residencies
Anne Steves ResidencyIn Partnership with Gower College
07 January - 31 March 2014
This exciting residency opportunity is a partnership between Gower College Swansea and Mission Gallery. With one residency beginning in September 2013 and the other January 2014, this is a fantastic opportunity for two emerging artists, from any discipline, to work with the resources and expertise at both organisations. The successful applicants will be expected to develop their own work; lead workshops at Gower College Swansea; participate in an open studios event; culminating in an artist talk and final profile at Mission Gallery.
The selected artists will be mainly based at Gower College Swansea, Llwyn Y Bryn Campus for 3 months. The residency will include a £1500 Artist Fee, a materials budget, technical assistance, marketing, mentoring, guidance and support in all areas of professional practice. This will also include a profile within Mission Gallery in May 2014. Any emerging artist who could demonstrate outstanding creative ability, combined with some experience of arts education was eligible to apply.
Selected Artists:
Erin Rickard | 16 September - 18 December 2013
Anne Steves | 7 January - 31 March 2014
Images by Anne Steves
Anne Steves Artist Statement
I am a visual artist currently living in British Columbia,Canada. I was born and raised in Swansea and attended Gorseinon Collegebefore my move. This shift in place at the beginning of my interest in contemporary art has influenced my work considerably. I received my BFA from Emily Carr University in Vancouver and my MFA from the University of Victoria.
As a visual artist, I am dedicated to a drawing and fibre-based studio practice that explores the gendered relationships we have to place. I choose to use the half remembered craft skills of my childhood in Wales to perform this exploration. Using written and visual documents, memory, research and the physical act of making, I find conflicts in how a place is portrayed and how it is experienced, particularly through the female body.
The multiple narratives of a place are evident in its oral histories, its buildings, its costumes, its art and of course its literature. Literature and other written forms are often strong influences on my work and my interpretations of a place. I draw upon the resistance to binaries in the ‘ecriture feminine’ of Helen Cixous, the taking up and letting go of Donna Haraway’s discussion of string figures, and perhaps the creation and destruction of Mary Shelley’s promethean Frankenstein. My work begins with a literary phrase that seems to open up a place if inquiry and I allow this written utterance to ebb and flow throughout the working process.
Visually my work takes the form of hand-crafted, costume-like objects created using maps, floor plans and diagrams as fabric patterns. These objects are worn, performed, enacted and displayed. I use them to activate the imagery I have drawn from my research into a place and its feminized history. These objects are accompanied by drawing and prints that document the interaction between the body, costume and the place.
I am particularly excited about the prospect of this residency as it would allow for an engagement with my own history of place. I was born and raised in Swansea and would like the opportunity to engage with notions of home and nation-hood. One of my first works with costume was influenced by the Welsh national costume and its complex history as a symbol of rural, female life. I am particularly intrigued by the role that this costume had in defining an independent national identity, its focus on the female body as a site for this nationhood and the use of print as a form of distribution.
I would like the opportunity to do further research into this topic. My times at the residency would be spent researching the history of national costume, repeating walks from memory in order to source materials and imagery, making my own contemporary national costume based on my research and outings and creating a series of drawings and prints to accompany this work. It had been a long time goal of mine to return home for this project and I hope that we can work on it together.
Anne Steves, August 2013
