Berwick Visual Arts and Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival have announced Katie Davies as their joint artist-in-residence, in the lead up to the tenth edition of the festival which takes place in September.
Davies, who is based at Spike Island Artists’ Studios in Bristol, works in video and installation to ‘explore the communal process of commemoration, ritual and performance, and the politics of spectatorship’. Recent projects include 38th Parallel, an eight-minute looping installation filmed at the Demilitarized Zone on the border between North and South Korea, and The Separation Line, an 18-month project to film and document British Armed Forces repatriation ceremonies in Wootton Bassett.
The Berwick residency is an opportunity to respond to the theme of this year’s festival, ‘Border Crossing’. The festival will highlight the town’s position at the heart of what was once known as the ‘debatable lands’, exploring the identity of the town which is seen as neither English nor Scottish. The Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival will launch, coincidently, during the week that the Scottish independence referendum takes place.
Looking forward to the residency, Davies said: “I know this will be a fantastic opportunity to work with and beyond political demarcations to get to the heart of what makes this area, place and people so culturally significant and historically important.”
Davies, who will take up residency from late March, was selected by a panel consisting of Marcus Coates, artist; James Lowther, head of visual art, Berwick Visual Arts; Melanie Iredale, director, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival; and Sam Peace, visual arts relationship manager, Arts Council England.
Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, 17-21 September 2014, various venues, Berwick-upon-Tweed. www.berwickfilm-artsfest.com
