To celebrate the launch of The Golden Crown, a new site-based commission from artist Carol Sorhaindo that explores memory, reflection, time and fragmentation, join artists Carol Sorhaindo and Bella Milroy for a conversation exploring their research. The discussion will focus on their shared interests in growing projects and practices which are centred in collaboration and care.
The New Block Commission is a new set of commissioning from Wysing Arts Centre. Supported by the Art Fund Reimagine Project, the New Block Commission moves away from indoor, exhibition-based projects to an outdoor site-based approach that makes our work more visible. Visit Wysing to see 'The Golden Crown' before January 26th 2024.
This event has been published in two sections:
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You can also listen to the conversation as a podcast on SoundCloud, Spotify and other podcast platforms.
About Carol
Carol Sorhaindo is a visual artist with an MA in Creative Practice and a diverse portfolio career. She draws inspiration from nature and landscapes, with a particular interest in plants of economic, health, and ethnobotanical interest on the island of Dominica where she currently lives. Her research extends to use of plants as pigments and fibre extraction for textile dyeing and creative applications.
Having lived in both the UK and Dominica, Carol’s own migration story, entangled transatlantic history and impact on mental wellbeing are of key importance. Carol explores the interplay of dark and light, joy and pain which are brought to light through botanical narratives which speak of migration, trauma, African and indigenous knowledge, resistance and healing. Carol also took part in a residency at Wysing in 2022.
About Bella
Bella Milroy is an artist and writer who lives in her hometown of Chesterfield, Derbyshire. She works responsively through mediums of sculpture, drawing, photography, text, writing, gardening and curating. She makes work about making work (and being disabled) and not being able to make work (and being disabled). This process-based practice is fundamental to her as a disabled artist. She is continually motivated by concepts of public and private spaces and where the sick and/or disabled body exists within them, themes which emerge throughout much of her work.
Video above: warning, 2023, 3 minutes 40 seconds, courtesy of the artist, creative captioning by Chloe Page.
In Flux: Sickness as practice and landscapes as freedom
Please note that the audio becomes quite loud at 9:43.
In this podcast we join artist-curator Joanna Holland (she/her) in conversation with Senior Programmes Curator John Bloomfield (he/him) to discuss Joanna’s recent exhibition Out of the Blue, and aspects of her Wysing residency which took place from 2020-2023.
Her residency extended over a long period as it worked around several flares of chronic illness and three hospitalisations. The residency moved with Joanna, back and forth from the ‘blue’ spaces of hospital to the ‘green’ spaces of Wysing.
During her residency, Joanna researched narratives of [in]visible disability. Throughout this period she was in dialogue with several crip identifying and Disabled artists whose practices explore inclusive landscapes. These included Caroline Cardus, Leah Clements, Suzie Larke, Sam Metz, Bella Milroy, Geneveive Rudd, Dolly Sen & R A Walden. Conversations included thinking around societal hegemonies, the disruption of binary narratives, exploration of non-verbal means of communication, and participatory experience through dissenting and critical provocations.
Simultaneously, Joanna experienced severe chronic fatigue, catching first wave COVID on top of pre-existing conditions. This dictated a move away from her longstanding participatory practice towards a practice which was not reliant on a physical body being present, but which could remain socially engaged. Supportive conversations with other artists during this time were invaluable. What started out as a curatorial residency transmuted into an artistic one as Joanna developed her own practice in Wysing’s polyphonic studio—as an artist working remotely in video and sound.
Joanna’s debut solo show Out of the Blue – landscapes of chronic illness emerged from her residency at Wysing. The Arts Council funded exhibition contemplates what it is to live a life disrupted, sharing lived experience of chronic illness through video, soundscapes, photographs and light sculptures.
Part real and part imagined, Joanna’s different landscapes consider notions of stress & solace, the synthetic & the natural, the seen & the unseen, the real & the imagined and the participatory body & the remote body. Artworks share very real experiences of diagnosis, medication, side effects, chronic fatigue, hospitalisation, and the impact of [in]visible disability on family life. They also explore an interconnectedness with nature, and the complex entanglements between self, planetary health, climate change and biodiversity loss.
It toured to Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester and originalprojects, Great Yarmouth in 2023. Click here to listen to audio descriptions from the exhibition.
About Joanna
Joanna is a socially engaged research-artist and curator. She’s interested in how we can live more equitably with each other and our planet. Her multidisciplinary practice builds on her background in feminist art histories, cultural inclusion, and biodiversity conservation.
Joanna explores notions of presence and absence in the making of culture and has worked for/with, amongst others, Attenborough Arts Centre, Cambridge Conservation Initiative, Cambridge Curiosity & Imagination, originalprojects, The National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts, the RNIB and SENSE. She’s been funded by ACE, Artists Newsletter, SHAPE, & Unlimited. She lives in Cambridgeshire with her family and her ravenous cat. You can see exhibition artworks and find out more at: www.hollandsyntax.uk or on Instagram: @joanna_k_holland