Spend the day or more at Hospitalfield Arts this Spring, with their Spring season and Open Doors weekend – talks, events, tours and a great café.
The use of material illusion and a pursuit of fluidity of meaning are inherent in the work of Laura Aldridge and Caroline Achaintre who have each been commissioned for ILLUSION. Both artists foreground the instability of the materials they use in relation to the imagery they choose and the finish they create. The craft processes they employ bridge between the familiar domestic and the wildly shamanic with the resulting works emerging like unnerving, celebratory folk monuments.
In a series of site-specific readings Maria Fusco will also examine physical vulnerability as she shares excerpts from her forthcoming novella which takes place in a decrepit, abandoned palace, once the home of the first Marquês de Pombal, the inventor of the grid system. In addition to artists’ talks and tours during the weekend, the audience is invited to take part in the alchemy of a Saturday morning pit firing led by Laura Aldridge and ceramicist Fran Marquis.
Laura Aldridge’s sculptural installation in the garden will draw on experimental fabric banner prototypes which she made during her 2013 Residency at Hospitalfield.
Caroline Achaintre’s project will challenge the perceived use of the 1901 studios where residents have worked for over 100 years. She will consider the space as both a production and display environment, bringing existing works into new presentations and developing new work in situ.
Both projects come out of a conversation relating to contemporary approaches to making and the interplay between ideology, craft, representation and materials.
During the weekend a series of events will unfold which open up discussion and thinking on the materiality of the site and the concerns around materiality, representation and process within the artists’ work.
Events Schedule:
28 March, 6.30 – 8.30pm – Preview Event with artists’ talks in the Picture Gallery.
29 – 30 March, 11am – 5pm – Installation: Laura Aldridge (Walled Garden) and Caroline Achaintre (Studios). Talks and Tours: Maria Fusco, Laura Aldridge, Caroline Achaintre and Fran Marquis. Open doors, explore the house and grounds, guided tours, café.
29 March, from 11am: Ceramics Talks and Practical – Laura Aldridge and Fran Marquis on raku firing and pit firing, opportunity to fire a piece of ceramic.
29 March, 2pm: Touring Reading by Maria Fusco.
30 March, 2pm: Exhibition Tour by Caroline Achaintre.