As you will know if you have been following ARTCRY since the beginning, one of our aims was always that the people making decisions on applications regularly change. So now we are introducing our third ARTCRY panel...
Daz Scott, Dimity Nicholls, Lucy Jeffries, Jess Bunyan, Sita Thomas, Titilola Dawudu, Vidya Patel. The panel will be chaired by Chloe Osborne (non-voting).
To tell you a little bit more about them we asked all our new panel members to tell us about a piece of work they saw or were involved in which has changed their thinking. Here's what they said...
Photograph: Christine Sun Kim’s ‘If Sign Language Was Considered Equal We’d Already Be Friends at Art Night
Daz Scott - "I recently accidentally stumbled across Gaia, the touring artwork by Luke Jerram, while it was in Millennium Point in Birmingham. I was having a busy day, was on my way to a meeting, and then there it was; this giant globe rotating to soft music. I had heard about the installation before, and was taken aback by the fact that this artwork, which thousands of people have seen and experienced, just popped up in my day. Gaia gave me a much needed sense of perspective, scaled down my worries, and gave me a renewed sense of responsibility. It made me think differently, and the best part was that it was a completely free, completely unexpected artistic experience that interrupted my day-to-day life."
Dimity Nicholls - "Christine Sun Kim’s ‘If Sign Language Was Considered Equal We’d Already Be Friends’ on a huge hoarding in Kings Cross as part of Art Night in the summer of 2019 was visually striking and chimed well with my musings on how art exists in our environment, and the function of art in ‘non-art’ spaces. Her work harnesses the beauty and inclusivity of apparent simplicity, whilst dealing with deeply complex themes."
Lucy Jefferies - "Noemi Lakmaier’s The Observer Effect involved the artist sitting behind glass door in Swiss Cottage Library Gallery for 10 hours a day painting old shoes with blue road paint and stacking them on shelves and in boxes. The simple work came with waves of meaning encouraged by the durational nature of the piece. Initially for me the infinite task of painting the shoes provoked comparison to fairytales, especially when standing in a library, and this brought with it a type of magical innocence and joy. On closer inspection the aesthetic of a piece evokes a modern-day factory which suggests that Lakmaier is a worker trapped into a life of working long hours for little reward. A few minutes later I am struck by how sinister the stacks of old shoes are piled up in peaks and the quality of the blue road paint – chosen by the artist for its association with disabled road markings – which seems to almost obliterate any surface it touches wiping out all trace of what was there before. Finally I think about the name – The Observer Effect – which refers to the fact that observing a situation or phenomenon necessarily changes it and I start to feel anxious, what part I am playing in this exhausting cycle? I start to think about the part we all play in oppression and how easy it is to ignore – I look around, are all these other people seeing what I see? I leave with so many questions and I have spent the 9 years since I saw this piece enjoying considering the answers."
Jess Bunyan - At the end of 2021 as a team (at Rising) we visited MAIA’s YARD in Birmingham which is a house they’ve got on a new housing development. We were welcomed immediately, fed and invited to join in a lunchtime discussion that just happened to be on the same day. It’s brought about change in that it reminded me how important spaces are – after the pandemic especially – but also about scale, it doesn’t have to be a massive thing to make a difference. I think they used the phrase ‘pocket utopia’ which has stayed with me since.
Sita Thomas - I recently directed Coventry City of Culture's welcome event for Little Amal with Emergency Exit Arts as part of The Walk. The Walk embodies so much of what I want to see more of in the arts; political messaging, hopeful human stories and work taking over the heart of the city in this incredible collaborative celebration.
Titilola Dawudu - "The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma. As a storyteller, it changed how I write and convey time, emotion... It was sublime and I often think about it."
Vidya Patel - "A recent work I was part of “Trinity”, a short film by Hetain Patel inspired me in many ways. The entire process was representative of experiences of marginality, expressing them in a freeing way. Whilst playing the lead role as a woman of South Asian heritage alongside dancer and actress from D/Deaf background, made me proud but also realising how unrepresentative mainstream films are. Through conversations in the process and with my co-star, I realised how much more is yet to be done in society. I am since, striving to find ways of making work which can be accessed by more people and am questioning the habitual straits hearing people have ingrained in them influenced by society but also how we can educate ourselves to make society more harmonious."
We're so excited to be welcoming this new panel!
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