Topic: Resilience and inclusive arts practice – Elaine Foster-Gandey, Beccie Morris, Safi Ngoy, Michelle Steele, Cate Gunn, Claire Heath, Maggie Rothwell – University of Brighton.
Resources: The slides from this forum will be available soon.
Session Summary: This Resilience Forum features a group of artists who are studying on the Inclusive Arts Practice and Creative Media postgraduate degree course at the University of Brighton. They were asked to respond to the title ‘Resilience’ for one of the modules they undertook with tutor Julia Winckler.
Elaine Foster-Gandey produced five photographs printed on fabric that she embellished with words and embroidery for the theme ‘Resilience’. The work showed images of the artist along with written narrative to accompany the photographs. Taking this work further into the final project on this module, she decided to take the ‘Resilience’ theme and work with two artists Michelle Steele and Maggie Rothwell. The assignment was re-named ‘the sewing project’.
This work began with the visual narratives of the lives of the three female artists, post menopause, exploring the concepts of age and mortality. Each artist had recent experience of loss and subsequently bereavement became the thread running through the core of the project.
The Forum will take place within the artists’ exhibition and there will be a chance to view this as well as hear about how the theme of resilience shaped their work.
Biography: Elaine Foster-Gandey is a multi-media artist working with the body, performance, costume, mask & textiles. In her latest work she has been exploring film and print where her primary focus is in the exploration of how her individual interior life is made externally manifest.
Beccie Morris is an artist who specialises in ceramics, but who also has a passion for photography. “Where clay becomes, photography captures, and capturing and becoming are resilience itself.”
Safi Ngoy is an artist and photographer who loves working with communities, with her passion for art and community the driving force behind her life and work. She shows resilience as an experience that is lived and defined differently by each one of us, as a unique experience and with a unique definition.
Michelle Steele is a textile artist working with painting, photography and the natural environment.
Cate Gunn is a published travel and arts photographer, taking a humanitarian approach which focuses on the essence of people and the places in which they live as well.
Maggie Rothwell is a painter who works mainly in acrylics, painting the local landscape and still life.
Claire Heath is an artist whose interest lies primarily in community art projects using clay and recycled materials.
Who might be most interested: Academics, practitioners, students, parents, carers, community workers, volunteers, public sector workers, young people, service users and people with lived experience of mental health problems.
This event took place on Wednesday 20 June 2018.
The Resilience Forum is for ANYBODY (with a pulse!) involved with or interested in resilience research
