Deadline for applications: Monday 4 April 2022 (10.00am GMT)
Applications are now open for an artist or creative practitioner based outside of London (but within the UK) to join the Somerset House Studios community for a residency of up to 3 months from May 2022. Proposals are invited for this artist or creative practitioner to develop a new wall-based work, such as wallpaper, mural, wall-sized imagery or other approaches, to be presented in the Gallery 31 exhibition opening July 2022.
This opportunity is open to visual artists, mud larkers, chemists, draughtspersons, urban planners, illustrators, pattern designers, textile designers, photographers, bird watchers, horticulturalists, foragers, gardeners, organisers, engineers, rock and mineral nerds, speculative fiction writers, any other type of writers, groups (or representatives from groups) who are building common ownership infrastructures, or anyone who is interested in presenting complex data sets.
PROPOSAL PROMPT
What would be the implications of connecting the two gardens on Victoria Embankment behind Somerset House by repopulating the roads and built structures with organic forms and community infrastructure? What plants or microorganisms would cause significant (visible or invisible) changes to the ecology in the immediate area? Who would be served by a community fridge in that area? What sort of legal framework would be most generative for this patch of new grass? Who would likely be the workers to execute this alteration? What are their needs?
Applicants are asked to speculate on this prompt with either a work already in development or a new work in the vein of where your pre-existing research interests intersect with this question. Though any material gleaned from the site in question is welcome, we are not asking for anyone to directly respond to the prompt with a solution or a proposal.
Curated by Taylor LeMelle, the Gallery 31 exhibition themes will be further developed in conversation with the successful applicant and other participating artists. Applicants are welcome to consider the curator’s current areas of research which include:
- Property, ownership and property law (in the UK and Europe)
- Distribution, repair and value of obsolete media technologies
- Rising water levels and the implications this has for low-lying cities, boats
- Intoxication and cities (think of the phrase “high on life”)
- Healing yourself with plants
- Histories or current examples or fictions of purpose driven self-sufficient communities and children being raised by mutually supportive networks
