This year’s Clore Visual Artist Fellowship, supported by a-n, has been awarded to the Norwich-based artist Nicola Naismith. The award is one of 25 Clore Fellowships for 2017/18 with recipients from across the visual and performing arts, heritage, museums, literature, cultural policy, film and broadcasting.
Naismith is only the second artist to receive the fellowship after the new award was launched in 2016. She follows Salford-based artist Maurice Carlin who joined the cohort of the prestigious Clore Leadership programme in the award’s inaugural year.
Naismith’s socially engaged practice sees her working with digital and analogue processes and she is interested in ‘complex questions concerning labour, value and the changing industrial landscape’.
She explains in her artist’s statement that her cross-discipline, practice-based research projects are ‘used as a central research methodology with learning activities, knowledge exchange and dialogue all used to explore and establish common ground’.
Naismith has working with engineers and architects as well as museum and archive collections; she has been commissioned by the Foundling Museum and the Parliamentary Archives.
Naismith graduated from Reading School of Art and Design in 2002 with a BA (1st class) in Art in the Community before completing an MA in Textile Culture at Norwich School of Art and Design the following year.
Commenting on this year’s award, a-n director Jeanie Scott said: “We’re delighted to continue to support this dedicated Clore Visual Artist Fellowship. Once again the quality of the applications was incredibly high and Nicola is a very deserving recipient.
“The Clore Leadership programme is a great opportunity for an artist to develop their skills and resilience in this area and Nicola will be a strong addition to this year’s cohort.”
Image:
Group photo of Clore Fellows 2016/17 taken at the start of the fellowship, September 2016. Maurice Carlin back row, third from right. Photo: Hugh Hill
More on a-n.co.uk:
More on the Clore Visual Artist Fellowship including a Q&A with 2016/17 recipient Maurice Carlin
Revisiting Walthamstow: “This is what you can do with art education – let’s value it”
Documenta 14, Kassel: 30 recommendations from 10 artists
