Wysing Arts Centre celebrates its 25th birthday with a residency programme focusing upon ‘the future,’ exploring future potential through what we know of the past. In response to an open call, almost 300 artists applied to take part in the residency, The Future, and the final selection includes: Olivier Castel, Julia Crabtree and William Evans, Jesse Darling, and Alice Theobald.

For six weeks the five artists will be in-residence at Wysing’s rural site and, under the theme of the future, will develop new work to explore how we live today and how this could progress. Among the artists, Olivier Castel has presented work under thirty different identities since 2001, each of which is associated with a different body of work, which often use ephemeral or temporal forms –projection, light, surface, text and audio – to explore the process by which an idea, space, image, or thought is made visible.

Julia Crabtree and William Evans have worked together for nine years in what they describe as an ‘experiment in shared subjectivity’. Their work is rooted in using sculpture as a prop or toolwithin a larger process, to create installation, video, print and performance. Recent work explores what happens to objects and images when they are put through a digital blender – via scanning, CGI, virtual staging and simulation – to be expunged out into the world in another format.

Jesse Darling works in sculpture, installation and text, with work that considers networked subjectivity and the way that structures – architectural, political and philosophical – manifest in physical and social bodies. Finally, Alice Theobald produces live performance, video and installation, and explores the tension between authenticity and spectacle, form and feeling, and cliché and collective empathy, using moving image, text, spoken word, dance and music.

The artists’ residencies will build upon Wysing’s current summer programme Futurecamp for which ten artists are in-residence during a ten week period, and working to address pertinent issues regarding how we live now. The centre is also holding conferences to bring together speakers from different disciplines, including anthropology, philosophy, psychology and economics, alongside these ten artists.

During the autumn residencies, a public programme of events will also take place, where the artists and invited speakers will give presentations to offer new ideas around the theme. Work developed during the residency then goes on to be exhibited in at the centre, and throughout Wysing’s network of partner organisations nationally and internationally.

Artist Residency at Wysing Arts Centre, 3 November – 12 December, Wysing Arts Centre, Fox Road, Bourn, Cambridge, CB23 2TX. For more information visit www.wysingartscentre.org.

Credits
1. Julia Crabtree and William Evans, Antonio Bay, 2014.

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