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Artists–in–residence at ICIA, University of Bath, get Arts Council England funding
Two exhibitions organised by ICIA (Institute of Contemporary Interdisciplinary Arts) at the University of Bath have received funding from Arts Council England. Artists Margareta Kern and Deborah Robinson will be supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England to take up residence in one of the University's academic departments, resulting in a public exhibition and talk. The residencies are presented as part of ICIA's season of visual arts, performance and music which is programmed around an annual theme: this year artists respond to 'the place of work'.
Margareta Kern Guest
Residency: 4 March-18 June, Department of Social and Policy Sciences
Exhibition Opening & Artist's Talk: 6 May, 6.30pm, ICIA Art Space 1, until 18 June
Artist Margareta Kern takes up residence in the University of Bath's Department of Social and Policy Sciences. Whilst in residence, Kern uses the gallery, Art Space 1, as a site of production for her new installation, Guest, which will develop and change over the course of the exhibition. Kern will engage staff and students of the University community to explore, compare and contrast her own artistic methods of enquiry with those used in the sociology of work.
Kern’s installation follows a recent two-month residency in Berlin, funded by the British Council. She undertook research into the 'guest worker programme' of organised mass labour migration, from socialist Yugoslavia to West Germany in the late 1960s. Taking the 'guest workers' project as an ethnographic, economic and sociological reference point, Kern’s residency with ICIA further investigates labour and questions the relationship between host and guest, stranger and native, artist and subject, researcher and researched.
Head of Visual Arts at ICIA, Dr Daniel Hinchcliffe, said 'our residencies trigger unique dialogues. Artists, academics and students gain new perspectives on their own research and practice'.
Margareta Kern is a London-based artist, originally from Bosnia-Herzegovina/Croatia. A graduate of Goldsmiths' College, her work has been shown extensively, including Tate Modern, Impressions Gallery and HDLU Gallery Zagreb. Later this year Kern exhibits in the group exhibition Journeys With No Return in Berlin.
Deborah Robinson Fish - Eye - I
Residency: current, Department of Biology and Biochemistry
Exhibition Opening & Artist's Talk: 22 April, 6.30pm, ICIA Art Space 1, until 11 June
Artist Deborah Robinson enters the hidden world of the aquatic lab. The University's Department of Biology and Biochemistry, one of the UK's premier bioscience centres, houses a fish facility with 500 tanks and 10,000 fish. Here transparent medaka and zebrafish are used as biomedical models for research into human development and disease. Intrigued by the relationship between the scientist as observer and the observed living organism, Robinson constructs a 'fish-eye view' with film and sound equipment positioned within the tanks. Catching glimpses of researchers going about their daily work, she takes a fresh look at the 'I' who is the scientist. Robinson captures the strange poetic beauty of this see-through world - from fish, water and tank to the lens of the camera itself.
Dr Richard Hooley, Head of Biology and Biochemistry said, 'I asked a number of members of staff if they would be interested in the possibility of doing a collaborative venture with an artist-in-residence and I got a very good response…'
Robinson has exhibited in the UK, America, Germany and previously at ICIA in 2007. Her residencies include working with scientists in genome research at the Wellcome Trust, Sanger Institute, Cambridge. This project was given support from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, where Robinson was a guest in August 2009.
END
1. Margareta Kern is writing a blog hosted by a-n magazine during the period of her residency which can be view at: www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/597679
2. Image credit: Margareta Kern, Guest
3. www.margaretakern.com
4. www.deborah-robinson.net
Press contact: Yvonne Elston, Marketing Co-ordinator
ICIA Institute of Contemporary Interdisciplinary Arts
University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY
Tel 01225 38 4725 Y.Elston@bath.ac.uk
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