Project Ability is pleased to announce the Residency Programme 2012, an initiative to support Scottish based artists to develop their practice within a disability arts setting. The selected artists will be resident in Project Ability’s open studios for a short and intense working period of one month to focus on a specific project towards the exhibition in 2013. The artists are provided with studio space, materials and professional development opportunities within the Project Ability community.
The awarded artists 2012 are Karly Burns (March), Lauren Bryden (May), Simon McAuley (June), Suzanne Wason (July), Fraser Ross (August) and Elaine Dockery (September).
Karly Burns has just completed her second Project Ability residency; her practice explores the modern preoccupation with youth, beauty, materialism and the associated lucrative consumer culture. Karly spent her time creating a body of smaller works on paper and canvas and an interview with Karly on the progress of her residency will be published soon.
Lauren Bryden is a printmaker who uses both natural and recycled materials teamed with low tech hand-printing techniques in her ‘portable printing studio’, The Print Assembly. On her residency, Lauren will be spending an intensive period of printmaking and is interested in exploring new methods and working practices in ceramics.
Simon McAuley is a Project Ability artist working in the Connect programme and is embarking on his third Project Ability residency. Simon engages with a unique drawing tradition that emerges from an understanding of colour and texture, with marks resolving on a level surface showing the richness or flatness of the chosen colour. Line, painterly applications, ground, colour and texture; these worked surfaces depict a motion that has the potential to appear everywhere at once.
Suzanne Wason creates drawings, paintings and sculptures through a process of repetition and reproduction based around mental health issues, depression and anxiety disorders; with the image of the hands as a starting point and recurring motif representing the blight of OCD. Suzanne is currently working alongside Sandy Guy in his studio space and shop In Public and aims to use the residency to continue developing this working relationship and exchange.
Fraser Ross is an artist, designer and part time lecturer in International Product Design at Glasgow Caledonian University. During the residency Fraser will explore the varying levels of human interaction through a number of sensory objects; exploring movement, feels, smells, sounds and how this affects our own interpretations of mass production. Fraser Ross is inspired by Scotland’s indigenous plant life and is currently developing a new work entitled ‘Sense’ based around human object interaction.
Elaine Dockery is an artist and craftsperson specialising in stained glass and mosaic as well as academic qualifications in Field Archaeology, Anthropology, Sociology and Modernities (20th century English Literature). In addition to this, Elaine also has extensive experience in community development including a fieldwork project as part of Project Payamino, Ecuador, Edinburgh Theatre Workshop’s Black Sun Over Genoa community choir and the live performance Girl – a sharing of recordings, film and photography in conjunction with Ankur Productions and the Glasgow Women’s Library in Street Level Photoworks. Elaine’s residency will follow a research period in Shijiazhuang, China and she plans to create a series of mosaics in glass, ceramic and stone based on this trip.
The artists will be exhibiting their new work in an exhibition at Project Ability Gallery in January 2013.
