Artist Maurice Carlin will be taking over a-n’s Instagram later this week as research for his a-n supported Clore Visual Artist Fellowship takes him first to Hong Kong, and then Bangalore and Kochi in India.
Travelling with Clore Arts Council England fellows Jerrel Jackson and Victoria Amedume, Carlin says the trip is a chance to explore how Hong Kong has become one of the world’s leading art market centres, and how a less developed arts infrastructure in India “might mean that culture there emerges out of an intrinsic need to produce things”.
He explains: “In Hong Kong, we’ll be hosted by Clore Hong Kong international scholarship fellow Susanna Chung who works at Asia Art Archive, and by the non-profit artists residency space Spring Workshop.
“I’m interested to explore how the city has recently become one of the world’s leading art market centres with Art Basel Hong Kong now fully established, and how this relates to Manchester and north west England, where I’m based. A burgeoning art market has been developing in the north west over the past five to ten years, but it still has many challenges to overcome.”
Along with a visit to the Asia Art Archive, Carlin’s schedule includes meetings with curator Ivy Lin and artist Kurt Chan, and with the recently appointed director of M+, Suhanya Raffel.
“M+ is a new museum, due to open in 2019, which is the flagship project of Hong Kong’s highly anticipated but much-delayed West Kowloon Cultural District,” Carlin says.
In Bangalore, he will hosted by another Clore fellow and artist, Archana Prasad, who runs artist support project Jaaga. Carlin says he is looking forward to experiencing “an arts ecology which is very different to what we have in the UK” and “would like to understand how artists deploy their creativity towards the funding and resourcing of arts projects”.
Places to visit in Bangalore include India Foundation for the Arts, Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology and artist-run platform Experimenta India.
The final stop over is Kochi, a city on the south western coast of India, where Carlin plans to visit the 2016 edition of The Kochi -Muziris Biennale, which continues until 29 March 2017.
“Launched in 2012, this is the first biennale to ever be held in India,” Carlin explains. “It has helped inspire a reconsideration of contemporary art in an Indian context and what it means for Indian artists to have space to create temporary, conceptual work, outside the constraints of the market.”
The Clore Leadership Programme is aimed at helping to develop leadership skills within all areas of the arts. Supported by a-n, Carlin is the inaugural Clore Visual Artist Fellow 2016/17. Follow his posts from Hong Kong, Bangalore and Kochi on a-n’s Instagram
To apply for the Clore Visual Artist Fellowship 2017/18, which once again is supported by a-n, see further details on a-n.co.uk. Deadline for applications is 13 February 2017
Image:
Maurice Carlin installing Temporary Custodians of Islington Mill at Home, Manchester. The work is made up of 100 unique relief prints taken from the surface of the derelict 5th floor of Islington Mill, the Salford based arts hub where Carlin is director. Income from the sale of the work will raise funds for the building, buyers becoming ‘custodians’ or joint owners with the other buyers of the large scale installation, who all have a stake in the future of what the mill can become.
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