Re/wilding

Each year of programming at Wysing unfolds along a theme. Drawing from Wysing’s rural site, the theme for 2022 is “re/wilding”. Together with artists and publics, we are thinking about non-extractive processes, time and restoration, land rights, access and the commons. We invite those who spend time with us to “re/wild” their practice – spending time considering what to leave behind, and what might be allowed to flourish. At a time of immense global upheaval, could this be a time to reset, recuperate, re-prioritise, or experiment in new ways?

Wysing’s vision is to cultivate the freewheeling imagination; we support ideas and practices that shape the world. At a time of increased uncertainty and precarity, particularly for artists, we are working to ensure that we use Wysing’s resources responsibly.

We have reviewed our use of open calls to consider approaches to programming that are less reliant on unpaid artist labour. Working with a network of advisors made up of Wysing alumni, we are making efforts to bring new voices into our programmes. Our 2022 Advisory Group includes Maëva Berthelot, Christelle Oyiri-K and Amanprit Sandhu.

We are also continuing to work with artists programmed as part of our Reception year, many of whom have had plans affected by Covid-19. Throughout 2021 Reception was taken as an act of welcoming, hosting and caring, tools that we will continue to focus on as we bring artists into our year of re/wilding.

Alongside our programme of residencies, Wysing will host a gathering, ‘From the Ground Up’ (more information on this can be found via this link here), a summer Open Studios and a series of pilot events that will support local and national artists via our digital and onsite resources. More information about this will be announced later in the summer.

2022 Residencies

Babeworld x utopian_realism

Babeworld and utopian_realism have decided to use their time at Wysing to be in the same space together, planning and developing ideas. Given the pressures of daily life, this time together is rare for them.

Babeworld is led by Ash Williams (she/her) and Ingrid Banerjee Marvin (she/her), with associate artists Gabriella Davies (she/her) and Caitlin Chase (she/her).

Babeworld seeks to create a more representative art world through the creation of art, fundraising and creating grants, and facilitation of events for those who are marginalised in the arts. With an emphasis on collaboration and co-creation, Babeworld’s practice focuses on themes of political and societal identity, specifically disability/access, neurodivergence, sex work and race. Their interactions with the communities they create and infiltrate consists of oversharing (otherwise known as attention-seeking) on the internet and through their events. You best believe they'd overshare at a round table, and probably also cry. Babeworld are committed to bringing their ideas and networks to institutions and organisations in the art world, whether they want to hear it or not.

utopian_realism (aka Alessandro Moroni he/him) was born and raised in Italy and is currently based in London.

Unfolding through long-term research-based projects often starting from internet-native music genres and their aesthetics and communities, his practice focuses on concepts of nostalgia cycles, controlled escapism, commodified utopian narratives and collapsing myths of progress.

Delaine Le Bas

Delaine le Bas will using the time at Wysing to explore her large-scale and outdoor practices, making use of Wysing’s extensive grounds and resources.

ISTORY*

BORN IN WORTHING 1965. DISRUPTED EDUCATION BETWEEN THE AGE OF 5 TO 16. LISTENING TO POLYSTYRENE IN 1978, DRESSING IN VINTAGE AND HANDMADE CLOTHES. 1980 GOES TO LOCAL ART SCHOOL. 1984 THE HOUSE OF LE BAS IS CREATED. 1985 DAMIAN JAMES LE BAS JOINS. 1986 TO 1988 SAINT MARTINS SCHOOL OF ART LONDON – ART, CLUBBING, FASHION. RETURNS TO WORTHING WHERE SHE STILL LIVES, CREATES ART WORKS AND KEEPS TRAVELELLING AS A LIFEIST** AND PERFORMALIST*** IN AND ACROSS THE UK AND EUROPE, SOUTH KOREA, ZIMBABWE, CANADA, RAJASTHAN. WORKS INCLUDED IN VENICE BIENNALE, PRAGUE BIENNALE, GWANGJU BIENNALE AND OTHER ART INSTITUTIONS INTERNATIONALLY. IT ALL CONTINUES...ITS WHERE YOU COME IN....

DELAINE LE BAS 2022

*ISTORY – CAROL SCHNEEMAN (1939-2019)

**LIFEIST – LINDA MONTANO (1942)

*** PERFORMALIST – HANNAH WILKE (1940-1993)

Seema Mattu

Seema Mattu will be spending time in Wysing’s Recording Studio to create a series of podCASTE’s, i.e. a programme of podcast episodes. Each episode will focus on caste within a particular area of the world. Seema Mattu is a gender-expansive Valmiki artist, whose practice is framed as a theme park known as SEEMAWORLD. Within SEEMAWORLD, vessels and portals are built and evolved, giving viewers access to the realms she constructs. Through the welding of 2D and 3D mixed-media, themes explored include: the system of caste, queer sorcery, fan labour and gender taxonomy. Projects and exhibitions include: Eastside Projects, CCA Glasgow, Fotomuseum (Zürich, CH), Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), LUX, Berwick Film and Media Festival, IKON gallery, New Art City and QUAD. She is currently participating in Film London’s FLAMIN Fellowship (2021-2022), is a recipient of New Midland Group’s Research and Development Bursary (2021-2022) and, as of December 2021, a QUAD International Digital Fellow (2021-2022).

Brooke Palmieri

Brooke will be taking the time at Wysing along with collaborators to rest and replenish via reorienting themselves under the cosmos.

Brooke Palmieri is a historian, writer, and printer, if printing can also be considered as a form of sculpture and performance. In 2018 they founded CAMP BOOKS (http://campbooks.biz), a platform for making the history of gender non-conforming people more accessible through teaching, cheap printing, and building archives and libraries. The bulk of their printed posters are drawn from intensely researched anti-assimilationist queer history, and raise funds for mutual aid projects. Their writing has been featured in publications by Pilot Press, WMN_Zine, and Louche Magazine, and recent work include "Muscle Memories" as part of In Transit, Our Memory Fragments at Chelsea Space and "Take Nothing For Granted: Theses on History," at Gaada.

Eve Stainton

During their time at Wysing, Eve Stainton will work with welding specialist Hester Thompson and a cast of 5 gender non-conforming performers (musicians and movement practitioners) to research live welding in a performance setting for a new upcoming research project.

Eve Stainton is an artist interested in the politics of uncodeable queer presence and its intersections with race and class. They create multi-disciplinary performance worlds that hold movement practices, digital collage, and welded steel, and other invisible forces like waves, imagination and drama. These forms work together to create live ecologies that are discordant, multi-layered and psychedelic. They have a continued interest in clashing and co-occurrence which is also reflected in their visual art practice. Stainton is interested in the production of conflicting states and textures to unravel essentialist thinking, with intent to create more expansive understandings of the lesbian identity, non-gender/variance, and perceptions of the ‘real’.

Notable presentations include: New commission ‘Dykegeist’ for ICA (2021), Close Encounters, Copenhagen (DE), Venice Biennale performance programme with Florence Peake (2019), Block Universe (UK), The Place (UK), Nottingham Contemporary (UK), Crac Occitanie (FR), Sadler’s Wells Lilian Baylis (UK), La Becque (SE), LCMF (UK), CCA Glasgow (UK), Tangente (CA). Features include AQNB, FACT Mag, Dazed Beauty, Twin Magazine, Art in America, This is Tomorrow. Work for other artists include Anthea Hamilton, Tai Shani, Last Yearz Interesting Negro, Sonia Boyce, Malik Nashad Sharpe, Holly Blakey, Goldfrapp, Compagnie ECO international tour, Vivienne Westwood, Claire Barrow, Art School, Molly Goddard, walking for London/Shanghai/Paris Fashion Weeks.

Fanta Sylla

Fanta Sylla will be travelling over from Paris, France to spend time at Wysing writing and developing new ideas.

Fanta Sylla is a film critic, screenwriter and director born and based in the Parisian banlieue. She has been published in Reverse Shot, The Village Voice, Criterion, Pitchfork (US), Sight and Sound (UK), Cléo Journal (CAN) and Les Inrocks (FR). She has created the Black Film Critic Syllabus, an open access compilation of files and resources on the intersection of Blackness and cinema and has taught the course Cinema in Black in New York for Pioneer Works. She is currently developing various TV projects.

Carol Sorhaindo

Carol Sorhaindo is a Visual artist with an MA in Creative Practice and a diverse portfolio career. She draws inspiration from nature, cultural heritage and landscapes with a particularly interest in plants on deteriorating mill sites in Dominica where she currently lives. Having lived in both the UK and Dominica, entangled roots and transatlantic history which combines African, Dominican and British influences are of key importance. Her research and passions include botanical histories including ethnobotanical and traditional uses of plants as food, medicine and for use as art and craft materials. She enjoys close observation of plant growth, gardening, botanical drawing and explorations of natural dyes and earth pigments for textile applications.

You can find out more about Carol’s time at Wysing via our Broadcasts site here.

Jasmine Thomas-Girvan

Jasmine Thomas-Girvan was born in the parish of St Andrew in Jamaica in 1961.

A sculptor, trained in jewellery and textile design, Jasmine received her BFA from the Parsons School of Design and has more recently explored paper making and glass blowing techniques. Her work has evolved during her career from more intimately sized, often wearable objects, to large scale installations with multimedia elements.

Jasmine’s sculptures and installations are as multifaceted as the region in which they were created. The magical realist elements evidenced within them reference ancestral memories, indigenous African cosmologies, postcolonial regional politics, race relations in both the Caribbean and Latin America as well as deeply personal, sometimes tragic aspects of her life. She has oftentimes been inspired by and sometimes referenced the works of writers such as Octavio Paz and Olive Senior.

Her awards include the Tiffany Award for Excellence at Parsons, the Prime Minister of Jamaica’s Certificate of Recognition, the Commonwealth Foundation Arts award in 1996, the Aaron Matalon Award for her contribution to the NGJ’s 2012 and 2017 Biennial exhibitions, and the 2014 Silver Musgrave Medal of the Institute of Jamaica.

Jasmine lives and works in Maraval, Trinidad.

Both Carol and Jasmine’s residencies were hosted in partnership with The World Reimagined. The World Reimagined is a ground-breaking, vibrant art education project to transform how we understand the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans and its impact on all of us so that we can make racial justice a reality, together. The World Reimagined is supported by Arts Council England, you can find out more about the project here.

Rebekah Ubuntu and Jaime Peschiera

Rebekah Ubuntu will be responding to the theme of re/wilding and using their time at Wysing to rest and recharge, collaborating with Jaime Peschiera.

Rebekah Ubuntu is a multidisciplinary artist, musician, university lecturer and artist mentor based between London and Kent, UK.

Their practice explores speculative fiction, ecologies and belonging through voice and sound art, electronic music (composition and improvisation), moving image, writing and performance. They also co-create in mixed reality, installation, podcasts and workshops.

Rebekah’s solo and collaborative works have been showcased at BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 6, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Frieze London, Tate Modern and Tate Britain, Barbican Centre, Adam Mickiewicz Institute (Poland), Diametre Gallery (Paris), New Art Exchange (Nottingham), Four Four Gallery (Nottingham), FACT (Liverpool) and London’s Serpentine Galleries among others.

Rebekah is Artist in Residence at Drake Music (2022), a Jerwood Arts Bursary recipient (2021), Womxn of Colour Art Award finalist (2021) and Adam Reynolds Award finalist (2021).

Rebekah Ubuntu identifies as Black, queer, genderqueer and disabled. Transfeminist, disability, climate and healing justice perspectives and practices are central components of their praxis and research.

Jaime Peschiera is a Latinx artist, producer, creative director and senior lecturer in audiovisual media based in London, UK. Their current art practice explores autoethnography, critical race theory and climate justice through photography, moving image, sound art and mixed reality.

Jaime has over two decades teaching experience supporting students' creative and professional development. He has been a senior lecturer on BA and MA programmes at the University of the Arts London, the Met Film School and London Film School, and designed and taught the City Lit Film School as well as the London College of Communication’s inaugural Summer Film School.

Ubuntu and Peschiera’s collaborative works have been showcased at BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 6, Tate Modern and Tate Britain, Barbican Centre, Adam Mickiewicz Institute (Poland), New Art Exchange (Nottingham), Four Four Gallery (Nottingham) and the ICA among others.

Gary Zhexi Zhang and Waste Paper Opera (Klara Koffen and James Oldham)

Gary Zhexi Zhang and Waste Paper Collective spent time at Wysing working on collaborative performance, Dead Cat Bounce; telling tales of time, money and the unmaking of reality in the wake of catastrophe.

Gary Zhexi Zhang’s current projects explore financial fictions and weird temporalities in the time of catastrophe. A recent body of work, Cycle 25, documented events that shape the boundaries between speculative beliefs and material realities, like natural disasters, scam nations and cosmic economies. As an artist and researcher, he has undertaken fellowships at the Berggruen Institute in L.A. and Sakiya - Art Science Agriculture in Ramallah. He is a co-founder of collaborative studio Foreign Objects, which was incubated at NEW INC and received a Mozilla Creative Media Award. As a writer, his work has appeared in ArtReview, Art Papers, Frieze, and others; he is the co-author and editor of Catastrophe Time! (Strange Attractor Press, forthcoming).

Waste Paper Opera is an experimental music theatre collective, run by composer, researcher and performer James Oldham, and artist, writer and designer Klara Kofen. Recent works include ‘Syrup Tracing’ (2020), an Ideas of Noise commission that reimagined Cyrano de Bergerac’s 1657 science-fiction tract Voyage sur la Lune, using DNA sequences of a newly discovered dictyostelium as the basis for dramaturgy and musical material. Their first collaboration with Gary Zhexi Zhang was a Medical Research Council funded project that explored the life-cycle of parasites, which culminated in a performance entitled ‘Vorephilia’ in spring 2018 at the Cambridge Junction. For ‘‘i’-the opera’ (Tête à Tête 2017, Glasgow International 2018), they collaborated with programmer Janelle Shane on a neural network libretto. WPO has hosted workshops at Central Saint Martins (OurHaus Festival – 100 Years of Bauhaus, Oct. 2019), and Limehouse Townhall (L (AI) BOUR, ‘useless l(ai)bour’, Nov.2019) and curated the interdisciplinary performance series Whole Punch at the Rosemary Branch Theatre. WPO collaborates with performers, artists, researchers and makers to create multimedia performances. Their interest centres around the potential of opera as a form of interdisciplinary making to convey and transform knowledge, and connect between fields, practices and ideas.

Dead Cat Bounce was commissioned by Arts Catalyst, with support from Medialab-Matadero. Its development was supported by Wysing Arts Centre and London Performance Studio .

2021 Residencies

Residencies taking place this year from our 2021 programme are Ruth Angel Edwards, Joanna Holland / [SYNTAX ERROR], Radio Web MACBA: Antonio Gagliano, Anna Ramos, Anna Irina Russell, and Albert Tarrats, Tammy Reynolds, and West Java West Yorkshire Cooperative Movement (WJWY): George Clark, Ismal Muntaha and Bunga Saigian.

To find out more about these artists and our 2021 Residencies programme, follow this link.

Our 2022 Residencies are supported by Arts Council England and Fenton Arts Trust.