New Writing Weekend with NC and Hospitalfield

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New Writing with New Contemporaries at Hospitalfield, 2022


New Contemporaries with Hospitalfield hosted five NC alumni who work with writing in their practice to take part in an intensive weekend of workshops, discussions, walks and screenings between Friday 11 and Sunday 13 November 2022.

Using the analogy of rambling as a theme, the long weekend’s programme of activities explored writing as practice by undertaking both group and individual exercises. Hospitalfield, Arbroath, on the East Coast of Scotland, is situated amongst gardens and woodlands and overlooks the North Sea. The group meandered around the locality of this historic and inspiring site, strolling through stanzas and rambling with utterances.

As an extension of the New Writing with New Contemporaries project, which launched in 2019, this discursive and collaborative weekend brought together five NC artists to develop their skills and experiment with new methods of writing as practice. Joined by leading artists, writers and curators, the programme of workshops, discussions, walks and screenings comprised opportunities to produce new writing and receive feedback.




Participating Artists

Christopher Bond is an artist and writer concerned with the emotional histories of queer people, and the biopolitical concerns of the last few decades. He creates minimal but psychically charged installations, as well as sprawling confessional texts, that represent fragments of a wide body of research that combines anecdotal encounters, magical realism, speculative fiction and performative interventions.

Christopher graduated from BA Fine Art at Goldsmiths in 2020 and was a resident of the Conditions Studio Programme 2020-21. He was a selected participant of New Contemporaries 2021. Recent shows have included ‘Deep Meaningful Conversation’ at Ugly Duck Project Space, and live performances at South London Gallery and Five Years Gallery

Seren Metcalfe is a Multidisciplinary Artist and Writer based in London. Her practice spans Performance, Moving Image, Installation, Painting, Sculpture, and Text. She attempts to create honest imagery that blurs the lines between fictional narratives and the poetic reality of being human. Combining themes of Time, Television, and Technology to question societal structures and the theatrics of everyday existence. Commonly using the body as a tool to question these ideologies with inspiration from Yorkshire Landscapes, Urban architecture, and Pop Culture.

Bella Riza’s work explores materiality and the representation of memory, landscape and cultural experience, in connection to ideas of belonging. Through writing, photography and moving-image she attempts to map and re-imagine spaces, creating a place for internal, subjective experiences to meet with the outer, external world.

Her work has been presented as part of ‘Healing Space’, GIANT Bournemouth, 'Not before it has forgotten you', Nicoletti (2022), LOOPBarcelona (2021); ‘Displaced Belongings’, PlatformAsia and Videoclub (2020); Tate St Ives (2019); ‘Heartache and Heartbreak’ on 4:3 (2019); and New Contemporaries (2018). She currently teaches on the documentary film MA at UCL.

Working predominantly between sound and moving image, Shamica Ruddock’s current practice is primarily concerned with speculation, fiction and folklore. Considering the ways Black diasporas are engaged and explored through sound, Shamica has been particularly interested in how black technosonic production functions as a form of speculation, narrativising and worldmaking. Through film Shamica explores Afro-Caribbean puppetry, masquerade and oral folk storytelling practices.

Shamica was a 20/21 FLAMIN Fellow, was the eleventh Postgraduate Artist in Residence at the South London Gallery (2021-2022) and is currently a Eccles Centre Visiting Fellow researching Maroon histories in ‘The Guianas’.

Agnieszka Szczotka’s practice draws on references as disparate as the Catholic imaginarium, feminist avant-garde, self-portraiture, pop songs and psychology, as a means to examine the role of the unreliable narrator. Interweaving personal narratives, historical events and various modes of knowledge production, Szczotka embodies a vast cast of personas that inhabit her performances, videos, photographs and texts. Embracing dark humour, affect and repetition she questions individual and collective memory as a means to challenge received knowledge and exorcise the past.


Application

Information:

  • Each artist will receive up to £150 stipend to cover their travel.
  • Artists will be provided with accommodation and meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) at Hospitalfield.

Criteria:

  • The opportunity is open to artists that have been included in New Contemporaries between 2017 and 2021 inclusive.
  • Artists should work with writing in their practice and evidence this in their application.
  • We particularly welcome applications from artists who identify as being Black, Asian or ethnically diverse, LGBTQ+ or as having disabilities, along with other socio-economic groups who may have not had access to similar opportunities.

Access:

If you have any access requirements you can include these or an access rider with your application. We are available to assist artists who may identify as having a disability with the application process. Please contact us at opportunities@newcontemporaries.org.uk ahead of the deadline.

Hospitalfield is a 19th century artists’ house and there are a number of steps up to many of the rooms in the house and between the House, Studios and around the Grounds. Prior to your application we aim to provide as much helpful information as possible around access to best inform your decision about whether to apply.