National Trust Mottisfont

Florence Kennard’s film-making aims to challenge the way collections are currently viewed and consumed, i.e. in a museum, gallery or personal home setting, and to explore the ways in which moving image can be used to create a new dimension for the collection. Her practice addresses the psychology of the human–object relationship, which further informs her exploration of different cinematic approaches used as devices to "unlock" the objects, and reveal their world. 



Her work has screened internationally at film festivals, including two nominations for "Best Documentary" at the London Short Film Festival. She's a member of BAFTA Crew 2016-2017 in the Editing specialism, and lives and works between London and The New Forest.



At Mottisfont she has been filming with a particular focus on the rose season. She's been gathering conversations to create a tapestry of different experiences of these flowers. She has been working with members of the public, gardeners and volunteers. Florence also worked with the charity Open Sight to facilitate contributions from visually impaired contributors in order to try and understand more about the way people experience smell and the evocation of memory.

Florence is currently editing her Mottisfont Observatory documentary ‘mono no aware’, which will be premiered towards the end of 2016."

(‘Mono no aware’ can be translated as ‘the pathos of things’, or ‘a sensitivity to ephemera’, it is an awareness of impermanence or transience.)

National Trust Mottisfont

‘There is a smooth musical grace to [her] verses, easeful as the flow of water; yet like water her images cut through ground, into landscapes both ‘human’ and ‘wild’.’ Mark Goodwin.

Aly Stoneman’s poems are concerned with the human experience of landscape and place, exploring connections between landmarks, myths and memories.

Aly is the Poetry Editor at LeftLion Magazine and has undertaken many commissions including writing for Guardian award-winning project ‘Dawn Of The Unread’ and as Poet-in-Residence for Lyric Lounge. A winner of the Buxton Poetry Competition (2015) and Nottingham Poetry Society’s Performance Poetry Competition (2011), she has read and performed her work at many festivals and events including Ledbury Poetry Festival, Copenhagen International Poetry Festival, and as part of Renaissance One’s mentoring scheme, The Final Stage, led by Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze MBE.

In 2016, she was awarded a Midlands3Cities AHRC-funded research studentship looking at ‘Contemporary Poetry, Sea-level Rise and Coastal Flooding’.

During my residency for The Observatory at Mottisfont, I’ll be responding to the flow of water through and around the estate including the Font spring, the Abbey Stream and the River Test. I’ll be walking, talking and book-making with staff, volunteers and visitors and gathering ideas and observations for new writing, including a collaborative poem.

http://www.alystoneman.co.uk/

National Trust Mottisfont

Savinder Bual

‘My practice is driven by my fascination with the illusory qualities inherent in cinema. Imagining myself as a cinema pioneer I explore the interplay between the moving and the still, creating works that sit between the pre-cinematic and the digital.

By discovering low-fi ways to add movement to single images and commonplace objects/materials my intent is to ignite an element of wonder at the illusion of cinema, giving the everyday enough of a twist to allow the imagination to run free.’

http://www.savinderbual.com/

Buckler’s Hard, New Forest National Park

Ella Frears is a poet and visual artist based in London. She has had poetry in various publications including BRAND, Lighthouse, Femmeuary, The Stockholm Review of Literature, Poems In Which, the Moth and The Emma Press as well as receiving commissions from Newlyn Art Gallery, Kestle Barton, the Olympic Park, Tate Britain and Tate St.Ives among others. 

Ella was shortlisted for Young Poet Laureate for London (2014) and was Poet in Residence at Knole House in Kent with the National Trust and writing agency Spread the Word (2015). She was shortlisted for the Jane Martin Poetry Prize, the Bridport Poetry Prize, and received a commendation in the Brittle Star Poetry Prize 2016. 

Ella’s work explores image, memory (both fictional and archival), sexuality and the female voice. She often uses humour and focusses on the minutia of the everyday as a way of discussing wider ideas of existence, human behaviour and relationships. Her research for each project is thorough and forms a large part of her practise. Ella works across media with poetry at the core of each piece - working with text, printmaking, moving image and audio. She was recently awarded a place on the prestigious Jerwood/Arvon Mentorship scheme 2016/17. 

http://www.ellafrears.co.uk/poetry

Buckler’s Hard, New Forest National Park

‘Printed images and multiples enable a process of vulgarisation, undermine the obsession with originality, so that content becomes the primary concern.  My work is generated from line drawings and vector files to create digital designs for water jet cutting and laser cutting in a variety of resistant and non- resistant materials.  I often take my starting point from commercial packaging nets that I customise in terms of structure and scale. Individual structures can then become units in a giant construction set, with the potential for endless configurations or systematic modifications according to context.  I delight in the unlimited and subverted edition.   Current work includes wall reliefs in paper, large scale steel sculpture, laser cut digitally printed fabrics, performative works, costume and body sculpture and site specific installations.

I am especially interested in the idea of the imperfect edition, in the production of the repeatable physical artefact and of multiples, and in the exploration of the interface between technology, ideas and craft skills.   In my work I seek to explore how extensively the digital file, that exists only virtually, can be downloaded to be manufactured through an ever expanding range of outputs and processes.   The extent to which multiple outputs from same destination file can be developed and shared in order to explore or defy notions of distance, space/mapping and time/ memory, and yet still retain the concept of an edition is absolutely compelling.    By exploring the concept of the multiple in this fashion I also hope to reflect upon the inherent value of the material and the edition size as markers of a political or social agenda.

For me, the concept of an edition and of authorship is particularly significant as new notions of intellectual property, information sharing and labour substitution pose new possibilities and threats to the artistic community and the creative economy. What physical, intellectual controls over the work do we forsake or acquire by working with digital processes, given that storage of digital information allows the relentless download of unlimited and perfect copies?’ 

http://www.axisweb.org/p/helensnell/                

Buckler’s Hard, New Forest National Park

I work as an interdisciplinary artist and independent researcher who employs a diverse range of creative disciplines, subject matter and tactics to explore the interactive potential of art as a research and pedagogical tool that informs social and environmental change.

Previous research based works draws parallels between the processes of artistic, archival and site intervention and that of agronomy - diverse cultivation of plant materials for human consumption.

Through a process of close observation and contextual research my work reconsider’s the variable manifestations of ‘drawing’, the materiality of ‘conversation’ and the slow activity of ‘walking’ as a generative discipline that attempts to activate a series of sensitive responses in relation to site, agency and ecology. This approach encompasses a multi-sited ethnographic practice that envisions the idea of place as a clustering of habitats and its inhabitants - living things perceived as an evolving system of multi-species.

Winchester Science Centre

From a Gothic cathedral to a 1970s milking parlour, from the mudflats of the National Wetlands Centre Wales to the cells of HMP The Verne, Simon Ryder has worked as artist-in-residence in a wide variety of locations around the country and abroad. For him the value of residencies is two-fold: first, it lies in discovering how we relate to individual places, how, as the author Robert MacFarlane puts it, places "have long offered us keen way of figuring ourselves to ourselves, strong means of shaping memories and giving form to thought"; second, it lies in being flexible and choosing processes or technologies that are in some way indigenous to each location to make his next piece. To see how this works in practice, Simon keeps an online journal of his work-in-progress at www.simonhryder.wordpress.com

Winchester Science Centre

Over the last decade, I have made films that attempt to distill ‘sense of place’ – the intangible resonances emanating from intersections within a web, woven by many generations, that we project onto the land. In the course of this process I have, through collaborations with archaeologists, travelled back to the post-glacial re-population of our landscape. Elsewhere, wanderings overseas have further extended the scope of my lens. 

The Observatory, in its location adjacent to the UK’s largest planetarium and on the boundary of the UK’s newest National Park, will be an outpost on the edge of two ‘wildernesses’. In spending time here making proto-animation devices, using as catalyst the narratives that cultures past and present have projected onto the heavens – which mirror their terrestrial world-view – I hope to create a portal into the physical landscape, journeys through which might enable fathoming of the landscapes within us.

www.wildboarpress.com/wbp/overview/

Winchester Science Centre

Isabella Martin is a cross-­‐disciplinary artist who explores how we develop and are formed by our perception of place. She uses language as a means of navigation, in an approach shaped by questioning, conversation and collaboration. Her work is context specific, driven by a synthesis between experimental play and active research, and ranges from outdoor interventions to performance and participatory projects. Isabella has exhibited nationally and internationally, and completed residencies in North America, Wales, Denmark and Japan. She is a member of the international curatorial and research collective Camp Little Hope, and an associate artist at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich and Kettles Yard, Cambridge. Currently based in the East of England,  she graduated with a BA  in Fine Art Sculpture from Brighton University in 2010.

www.isabellarosemartin.co.uk

Lymington Keyhaven

My sculptural work often includes found materials, and these are used in conjunction with prefabricated parts to construct large structural forms. Using these elements in my sculptures gives them a new place in the world. I aim to show the viewer items or materials that might otherwise be overlooked.

Travel provides me with structural ideas, new materials and exciting cross cultural references. The reflections I make on my surroundings or environment come through my careful choice of objects. I rely on visual experiences and chance discoveries to evolve work. This process of discovery and development is integral to my practice.

The idea of balance is another common theme in my work. Whether it is physically balancing or suspending items like test tubes or silk worm cocoons with bricks, or balancing materials in a more sensitive way in terms of colour, shape or form, for example.

www.katiesurridge.com

Lymington Keyhaven

Alice Angus’ work combines public art, illustration and textiles using drawing, embroidery, digital textile printing. She is interested in people, stories and heritage of places, with a particular interest in people and their relationships to landscape and environment. Alice is also Co-Director (with Giles Lane) of non-profit arts organisation Proboscis where she works on projects that include public artworks, academic research, arts and community commissions.

Alice said - “ I’m very excited to be commissioned for Observatory and am looking forward to working with people who live, work, visit, study and care for the Lymington-Keyhaven Nature Reserve and The New Forest National Park. I’m looking forward to learning about the natural and social history, human stories and folklore that are bound up in the the landscape of the Salt Marshes. During my residency I will investigating how the knowledge of the communities that use, visit or work on the Marshes can merge with scientific knowledge and studies into environmental change and coastal erosion to offer new thoughts on the role of local knowledge in terms of adapting to environmental and social change.

http://proboscis.org.uk/about/people/alice-angus/

Lymington Keyahven

Jilly Morris is concerned with marks that tell a story, moments that retain a physical presence, a mapping and collection of memories. Jilly is fascinated in how time affects landscape and how moments in time affect communities and their environment. Her current work is rooted in drawing, particularly with tools or objects not normally associated with the drawn process. She addresses a different aspect of the physicality and gesture of a tool by exploring its inherent qualities through mark making. Rich and textural surfaces evolve over time through experimentation and repetition; fusing process, intention and structure into a totality that generates form. 

Jilly Morris's work embraces different disciplines, including drawing, installation, collecting and recording data, and sculptural interpretation. Her artwork is often considered to reside in the grey area between fine art and making; integrating traditional craft techniques such as stitch into contemporary frameworks.

www.jillymorris.co.uk

All locations: Years 1 and 2

Marc’s intention to compose new, experimental, string quartets inspired by the various residency locations is an excellent fit with the ethos of the project and will enhance both its scope and impact as a result of his aim to focus on all four Observatory sites across the two-year period of the project, bringing a new perspective to the single site focus of the other appointed artists-in-residence. As an artist with an established track record in musical composition Marc is bringing a new element to the project in an artform that is not represented in the artists appointed to date. Year One of the project will engage with the residencies in the Observatory at Winchester Science Centre and Lymington/Keyhaven, Hampshire.

Marc’s role as Composer-in-Residence is supported by Arts Council England’s Grants for the Arts, SPUD and DIVAcontemporary.

• Marc's website

• Marc's soundcloud

• Marc's YouTube

Lymington Keyhaven

‘ANNUM’

Trudi is a Lymington based artist with a professional studio at ArtSway in the New Forest. She specialises in site specific work often focusing on waterways using recycled materials. Frequently working with discarded waste plastic, raising awareness of plastic marine pollution and out addiction to single use plastics that enter our water supply and end up contaminating our seas. Trudi’s practice involves continually observing the coastline in particular the Lymington and Keyhaven Salt Marshes where her photos and sketches document and highlight the delamination, break down and the entry of plastic into our food chain. Trudi’s residency at the Observatory straddles the New Year between 2015 and 2016 where as one year finishes we reflect on the past 52 weeks and contemplate the year ahead with ernest but fragile New Year Resolutions. Trudi is represented by the the Lymington Contemporary Art Gallery - Coastal Gallery.

Lymington Keyhaven

My works are inspired from walking and sitting out in the landscape, stilling the mind and closing my eyes to see images of light or dreams in my minds eye. I recently discovered the word Útiseta, associated with an ancient Nordic practice of divining knowledge, which describes this combination of sitting, seeing and place. I am contemplative when I work; a quiet mind guides a meditative path through a creative process.

My works are in a range of different art media: drawing, painting, printing and sculpture. I particularly enjoy making art medals, which capture large ideas in small hand-held sculptures.

The Observatory offers a new environment for me to create work, on the horizon between sea and sky, open to the elements and in a public place. This is a very exposed location. It will be a new experience for me to be inside looking out while others look in. 

http://nicolamossartmedals.com

Lymington Keyhaven

The time at the Observatory will be similar to a time-lapse project. Working at the Observatory for 28 consecutive days gives a rare chance to focus and ‘be’ in one space and focus more intensely on the present. Unlike other projects and residencies where the time between each visit was longer and less intense. The concentration of one moment is the visual and spiritual density of any artwork. Here a dialogue will begin between observation and invention, where a fleeting moment will be recorded by painting, drawing, words and sounds. Julie will also walk around the Salt Marshes each day, as daily walks are already part of her practice where it clears her mind and then the landscape delivers ideas.

The project will be recorded at: beyondthehorizon2016.wordpress.com

www.juliecollins.co.uk

Lymington Keyhaven

Adventuring into the soft-verged concepts of the place and the pre-place, the visible and the invisible, the temporal and the timeless; Emma Moxey positions herself as an abstract explorer and mapmaker.

Invited to follow in her footsteps, we quickly ditch the empirical traditions of measure and logic in favour of more intuitive tools. Equipped with our basic kit of frames, signs and symbols, we soon begin to navigate Emma’s loose ambiguity, tentatively tracking her progress and accumulating her themes.

Using each work’s apparent chronology as a guide, her work reveals itself to be a two-fold adventure. The first is one of discovery; a meticulous and creeping exploration of the painting’s surface in which automatic drawing is used as both a means of dwelling and a record of inhabitation. Through this, the quasi-landmarks of place are found and tentatively extracted, and a fantastical world is slowly brought into being.

Soon, this once-wilderness is colonised with ideas. Thematic codes, emerging structures and painterly systems scatter the surface, congealing and evolving in response to the surface catalysts and variants beneath. This is the second act; a process of coalescence and creative mechanics through which the suggested landmarks grow in potency, substance and significance.

Shifting and fluid, the images’ themes and schematics finally adhere to form an unworldly, intricate and interwoven topography, existing somewhere between idea and thought, being and becoming, place and space.

www.emmamoxey.co.uk

Lymington Keyhaven

Julie is a cross-disciplinary artist who explores the body’s dialogue with site, through gesture and sculptural inscription. Using drawing, sculptural intervention and performative exploration she creates delicate pieces, which speak of the fragile relationship we share with the world around us.

Traces and marks aim to speak of the space, linking gesture to emotion, intentional meaning and narrative. Reflecting her background in sculpture layers are constructed, and she is happiest lost in the gap between disciplines, often choosing to misapply methodologies as a source of new material forms and ways of documenting performance.

She will be in residence at The Observatory 18th-19th March and 18th-27th April.

If you would like to see more of her work please visit:

www.juliebrixey-williams.co.uk