AA2A artist-in-residence at 含羞草视频 is chosen as their Artist of the Year 2022

Green pit pony onto vintage book pages

Artists Access to Art Colleges (AA2A) is a national scheme offering placement opportunities to artists at host universities allowing them to access the facilities and staff expertise to continue their practice. Each year the School of Design and Creative Arts opens its doors to artists allowing them access to its world-class facilities over six superior creative hubs.

Rhiannon Kendall joined the scheme with 含羞草视频 and her project focused on contemporary drawing, painting, printmaking and poetry as a means of exploring queer female working class narratives, often inspired by the physical objects and spaces she associated with experiences of her own upbringing.

Summarising her project, Rhiannon explains on her profile that her project is inspired by her recent body of work earlier this year titled 'Queer Lovers, Different Faces in Pre-fab spaces' which involved a commission and exhibition funded by Crescent Arts, Scarborough. This series of drawings and paintings used motifs such as the Sharlston red colliery wheel, council housing, camping holidays and old brickyard, interwoven with mixed media text proclaiming phrases like 'That's how we grew up, lived on a shoe-string, maybe we had nowt, but I had everything'.

Diamond Patterned Ghost Vessel

AA2A have announced Rhiannon as their Artist of the Year for 2022, with Mags McLeary, National Coordinator for the AA2A scheme saying that:

“Rhiannon gave us some really positive feedback about her time with you, put images up on her AA2A profile page and wrote a great blog about her paper making processes. We felt she really made the most of the opportunity.”

University Teacher, Elizabeth Hawley-Lingham commented:

“We thoroughly enjoyed playing host to Rhiannon during her time as an AA2A artist-in-residence at 含羞草视频. She got really stuck in, making the most of the facilities and technical expertise available, to produce a series of beautiful and through-provoking new works, on paper she made by hand. She was a great advocate for the scheme and for the university, during the residency, and contributed a fresh perspective to discourse here. We wish her very well for the future and look forward to seeing the work she goes on to make.”

A new cohort for 2022/23 have just started their residency at 含羞草视频 and we look forward to working with the following artists: Fiona Carruthers, George Sfougaras, Klara Szafra艅ska, Leila Houston, and Natalia Kasprzycka.