Artist At Distance

About Artist @ Distance

The Artist @ Distance program originated during the United Kingdom lockdown, acting as a portal for online armchair travel to the worlds held within archive holdings. Through creative activities and digital multimedias, the program aimed to repair the temporary physical disconnect caused by COVID restrictions. Yet evolved into an archive advocacy model enabling the access equality and opportunity for multiple learning styles (ie: social, visual, aural etc…) and diverse cultural perspectives.

The program premiered with a collaborative project involving the Hardwick Gallery digital artist in residence Louise K Wilson. (Time) Travels in the Archive evidences the digital collaboration between myself in the role of University archivist, and Louise; exploring the impact on the creative practice where the artist can only witness retained archival heritage through the archivist gaze and record selections.

With an emphasis on exploring through studio practice (instead of specific objects), relational possibilities emerge for collaborative partners, expanding outwards as more audiences witness the growing portfolio of preserved creative activity. Artist @ Distance explores how an artist can re-imagine the archive management structures, heritage advocacy and questioning how retained archival data can be processed into alternative narratives.

The program can operate via distant remote means or embedded within the institutional body. The results enable an audience to experience the authentic accessing & journeying through a heritage collection via this unique creative access point. Opening potential alternative transformative cataloguing processes through art rather than complying with ISAD)g) standards or other cataloguing standards. 

Navigating Narratives

Short Term Fellowship based at the James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota, USA, March-May 2021.

Coming soon

Circus & Allied Arts Collection

Partnering with the Milner Library, Illinois State University, USA, January 2021. The project focused on the the Charles Clark photographic collection. A series of digitized negatives retaining images of circus acts & performers. The art focused upon the records physical condition, how the damage / decay altered the visual information composition.

(Time) Travels in the Archive

Collaborative project between the Hardwick Gallery (Cheltenham, UK), Louise K Wilson the digital artist in residence and myself in the role of University of Gloucestershire Archivist. Originally a five month project starting from August 2020 (subsequently extended into 2021); my challenge was respond, and to enable access to archive resources through a digital interactive collaboration. Owing to the United Kingdom COVID-19 lockdown, Louise was unable to physically visit the archive so viewed & created content using the University records selected, converted into data by the archivist. Thus in a sense experienced the archive through the lens of the archivist.