41 bursaries totalling £36,642 have been awarded to support 45 artists in the latest round of the a-n bursary scheme.
a-n Professional Development Bursaries fund artists to undertake a period of self-determined professional development through awards of £500-£1,000. The awards can be used for artist-to-artist or curatorial critique, or to support the learning of new skills or research into a new area of practice.
Manchester-based David Hancock combines his own practice with his role as director of the artist-led commercial gallery PAPER. He will use an award of £900 to undertake a period of mentoring through which he hopes to secure alternative representation for his own work.
“As director of PAPER and the public front of the gallery, representing my own work is becoming increasingly problematic, particularly at art fairs… I am finding it hard to present an air of objectivity when my own work is on show,” he explains.
Hancock says that the mentoring will help him identify “potential galleries with whom I can develop a relationship”. He adds that he also hopes to share this knowledge through Paper’s mentoring scheme, Tracing PAPER, and in turn support other artists to gain representation for their work.
Self-taught illustrator and designer Charlotte Edey will use her award of £548 to undertake training in a number of traditional techniques and processes that she says will enable her to be more ambitious in terms of making and exhibiting her work.
The training will include courses in hand engraving and embroidery through which she hopes to create two new series of works in copper and silk, with the aim of exhibiting them from September 2016.
“I specialise in hand-drawn monochrome illustration, focusing on intensely detailed linear drawing,” she says.
“The opportunity to translate this hand-drawing skill on to different mediums will vastly advance both my artistic practice and the audience I can reach, and will be a great learning curve and a test of my talent.”
Public performance
Fiona Harvey plans to use her award of £545 to further support the development of her practice into the area of public performance.
Harvey, who has traditionally worked in photography and installation, is currently developing a site-specific performance piece, Then & Now (pictured top), during a series of archaeological excavations of Bronze Age burial mounds in Hampshire.
The bursary will enable her to spend three days in consultancy with Gemma Williams, a dramaturg who specialises in outdoor performance. “Performance is a new feature of my practice,” she says. “To receive specialised professional help now with content and delivery will speed up development and extension of the work.
“The a-n bursary will enable me to give a public showing of the work more quickly and to follow that with adapting the work to be shown on other sites and to different audiences. But I also perceive a clear need to create elements of audience interaction and engagement, and these aspects are more likely to become reality if I can develop a dialogue with another professional taking the role of friendly critic.”
The full list of recipients is: Jennifer Bailey, Catherine Baker, Daniel Baker, Emma Brown, Megan Calver, Susie David and Gabrielle Hoad, Oscar Cass-Darweish, Kim Coleman and Laura Buckley, Emma Davies, Beth Davis-Hofbauer, Nicola Dale, Charlotte Edey, Penny Hallas, David Hancock, Fiona Harvey, Andrew Henon, Lorna Green, Caitlin Griffiths, Laura Johnston, Debbie Locke, Catriona Meighan, Debbie Sharp, Joanne Masding, Alice McLean, Laura Menzies, Kate Murdoch, Rachel Laycock, Rowan McOnegal, Eleonore Pironneau, Nikki Pugh, Holly Rowan Hesson, Norma Sales, Angela Smith, Clare Smith, Julia Snowdin and Sarah Middleton, Sayako Sugawara, Elena Thomas, Hannah Tounsend, Emily Warner, Karen Wicks, Alice Withers, Caroline Wright.
The recipients will be blogging on www.a-n.co.uk about their activities, sharing learning and progress with the artists’ community – follow them on a-n Blogs over the coming months.
Since launching in 2013, a-n’s peer-reviewed bursaries have provided over £150,000 of funding and enabled more than 200 Artist members to be involved in activity including new collaborations, visits to artists’ groups around the UK and attending events including the Venice Biennale.
a-n Travel bursaries will be announced soon.
