AA2A is a valuable opportunity expanding my constructional skills into the entirely new area of metal, with freedom to work intuitively at expanded scale using processes and equipment which are hitherto inaccessible to me in my small studio space. It will strengthen my sculptural roots whilst retaining the poetics of the performative, elements of my place-responsive practice, assisting the work back into the gallery.

My project explores ideas of an Open Sanctuary, a concept of strong yet flexible, fragile yet supportive structures promoting personal change and emotional development. Fabricated formalities will interplay with elements created during place-responsive encounters, so when re-sited into gallery they act in counterpoint establishing new experiential ways to navigate the work. What effect does a fixed structure have on renditions of place? How may the structures create visual choreography or stutter? How can structural risk be “lively” and responsive - creating tension or delicate poetics that allow interplay?

I will commence a series of table-top experiments testing different metals (variety of cutting, bending and connecting techniques and surface treatments), then experiment with how my body can be intuited into metal through weight, kinking, body contours, together with textures from place-taken wax impressions, photographs and drawings. I am excited to allow experimental outcomes to promote questions in a navigational, responsive and intuitive way, so I may cross making-boundaries, applying techniques from one material to another.

I will be ambitious and work towards developing larger outdoor sculpture. My increased confidence will facilitate working at rentable workshops, building a large body of work for a solo show in 2025. Not least AA2A heralds a new period of my artistic practice with its own flow of time, as I am no longer confined to squeezing my practice into pockets of time that accommodate childcare!

(profile photograph Briony Mitchell)