MAKING HISTORIES VISIBLE
Research Fellow
Susan Walsh is Research Fellow in the School of Art, Design and Performing Arts she is based at the Centre For Contemporary Art.
Her current research Documenting Changing Britain : Shelter Below The Poverty Line is both location and studio based and incorporates
her on going investigations into basic needs survival within 'outsider' communities such as, the homeless,migrants, travellers and romany gypsies.
One of her areas of research includes the creating of models/vehicles which could be used for shelter including adapting ready made objects
and recyling materials.
Recent work includes:
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Rub a TubSenior - Invisible Wash Project Space Leeds 2011
Collaborative Project-Lubaina Himid + Susan Walsh
We make work about the invisible and the unrecorded.Rub a Tub Senior - Invisible Wash is our most recent collaboration. Usually Susan thinks about people with transient lives, the objects they rescue, carry with them and treasure in a new place. Lubaina overpaints old objects with patterns, portraits and texts to make new readings of established histories.
We have worked together making films about artists lives, old houses and museum collections.
Between us we have explored behind the scenes at the V&A Museum, The Bowes Museum, The Hatton, The Geffrye Museum, The Tate, Stoke Museum and Platt Hall.
'Lubaina Himid and Susan Walsh have made a themed selection of obsolete domestic apparatus from the Artemis collection - washtubs, dollies and washboards - which they have assembled with their own materials into a number of sculptures. Tiny curious onlookers and hungry historians gather to view this memorial landscape which is dedicated to the invisible labour of the women who used them. The artists are both concerned with the power of everyday objects and the making visible of lost lives.' 28 April - 6 August 2011
For more information on Hunter Gatherer visithttp://www.projectspaceleeds.org.uk/default.aspxhttp://huntergathererpsl.tumblr.com/
http://www.projectspaceleeds.org.uk/hunter_gatherer_unid9df9_page.aspx
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To Scatter
The creation of a memorial to Irish migrants is the focus of this project, in particular Irish immigrants to Preston and the North West
A set of piano keys in the form of a chandelier is one way of making visual connections to oral histories such as popular song and ballad writing
both of which are valuable elements in linking histories and experience within communities.
To Scatter - A memorial to Irish migrants was shown in St Wilfrids Church in Preston 2010
It was commissioned by In Certain Places and curated by Lubaina Himid as part of Talking On Corners an annual on-going programme which
commissions regional, national and international artists to create temporary art in public places for Preston.
To Scatter
'Suddenly this music! Sleep retreats like the undertow of a wave in which a child grasps at a half-glimpsed shell, as I do at this cluster of notes, just heard in a dream. '
For more informationvisit
http://incertainplaces.org/category/artworks
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Work in Progress - Collages
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'As cultural anthropologists describe it, the modern age is an age of exile: being displaced between worlds, existing between a lostpast and
a fluid present, presents the most fitting metaphor for modern consciousness. In his constant state of transit between so many worlds, the
modern traveller is at home in none a 'homeless mind' constantly subject to nostalgia for a past fixed time, when identity was rooted, safe and
communal.' Human Cargo - Caroline Moorhead
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Appleby Horse Fair
Appleby Horse Fair is the largest traditional horse fair of its kind in the world. Set up by a charter under the reign of James II in 1665 and has
been an annual event since that time. Originally a venue for trading of all kinds of livestock and general merchandise, its popularity with the
vast numbers of gypsies who would come each year eventually led to the occasion being known as a special horse fair.
Today Appleby HorseFair is the venue of one of the largest remaining gatherings of Romany and Gypsy people. Observing them driving
various horse drawn and motorised caravans as they arrived at Appleby in 2008, as they have done for decades, revealed their determination
to keep histories, traditions and skills alive. Horse fairs are now one of the rare times gatherings of this kind can take place and are a time for
meeting, sharing news, having fun, racing or selling horses and also in Appleby to maintain a long held presence, for a few days each year.
The residents in this small town appear , in the main, to tolerate thei rarrival, not only as a unique and historic annual event but also as the
creator of an annual boost in trade from interested visitors and tourists.
2009 Appleby 'After The Event' work in progress.
Appleby 09 'After The Event' Photograph
2008 'Arrival' Film showing the arrival of horse drawn caravans in Appleby on their way to Fair Hill Camp site.
Appleby 2008 Photograph
For more information go to www.sheltaintransit.info
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Moving Images - Artist's Creative Spaces
Delete-Space-Shift-Return 12:02, a project using film and photography, which documents the deconstruction and reconstruction of the Herbert Tyson Smith sculpture studio in Liverpool . The film took over two years to complete and documented the sculpture studio during its last remaining weeks as a working artist's space. It was shown at the re-openinglaunch of the Bluecoat, Liverpool 2008.
This along with the video Displaced Space 3:20 documenting the Barbara Hepworth workshop/studio in St Ives forms part of a larger nvestigation into creative spaces as containers of memory. Both these films are now part of the archive/library collection at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds
Stills from - Delete Space Shift Return 2007
tones after sunset 3:35 video which is a view of Gwen John as a moving image, explores the idea that objects and interior spaces are
able to act as absorbers of memory and experiences. Moments of familiarity, a sense of recognition, a feeling of deja vu, fleetingly questioning our perceptions. First shown as part of the group show TheGwen John Project at the Centre For Contemporary Art and various locations at Uclan in 2008
tones after sunset and Displaced Space were shown at Leeds Art Gallery in 2008 as part of Women Are From Venus exhibition.
See short clips http://www.susanwalsh.org/moving_image/
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Moving Image Collaborations
On going project 2011
Gardeners Question Time.Susan Walsh and Lubaina Himid
Secret Garden : an on-going documentary project showing a variety of weather conditions, plant growth, bird song and voice over set in the
private environment of a British garden.
Earth Life Seen From The Moon 21:35 Susan Walsh and Lubaina Himid 2007
Earth Life Seen From The Moon explores our ideas around women's creativity and the madness which can develop from 'seeing too much'
and juxtaposes museum and domestic interiors connected to our lives as women, as artists, and as constantly interested observers.
It previewed as part of Prestival2007 and was shown in the exhibition Talking on Corners , Speaking In Tongues at the Harris Museum and
Art Gallery , Prestonand at Aberytswith Arts Centre as well as being screened as part of the international conference Melancholic States at
Lancaster University 2007. See short clip http://www.susanwalsh.org/moving_image/
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Installations
87 Drawers an installation of 87 drawers and five photo collages, activating readings around museum collections/buildings as containers of
memory was part of the group exhibition Distance No object, Bowes Museum 2004/5 for more info visit www.susanwalsh.org
87 Drawers 2004/5
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Cupboard Love was a solo exhibition at Castlefield Gallery in Manchester2003 which consisted of six hybrid furniture constructions and fifty
small paintings on paper which deal with working-class enforced nomadism. For more Info go to www.susanwalsh.org
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Orange 2003
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For more info visit:
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