Artists
United Kingdom
Catherine Banks
Together Apart: #Frontier
10.02.21 03.03.21
Catherine Banks is a photographer from the UK. who is studying for a Photography degree with the Open College of the Arts (OCA) – the distance learning arm of the University for the Creative Arts. Her recent practice has focussed on the use of landscape as metaphor – exploring how our physical environment becomes an inspiration and imaginative ‘stage’ for rituals and stories.
Catherine enjoys working collaboratively in small groups, including being a member of the editorial team of Edge-zine . This is an OCA online multi-disciplinary zine published by students which accepts, and sometimes commissions, contributions from students, graduates and tutors.
ABOUT FRONTIER
The opportunity to participate in the Residency arrived early in the final level of my Degree course at a time when I was feeling unmotivated due to the current restrictions, necessarily imposed by the pandemic, which have prevented me from pursuing my interest in landscape photography. I knew that I needed a creative ‘spark’ as a catalyst towards finding new approaches and it has been refreshing to share an extended period with artists across borders and be introduced to new ways of working.
During the program I presented some experiments using a different approach to a previous series on Liminal Landscapes. Following this I created a performative video work exploring how dreams contribute to my creative process – using nocturnal animals (captured by night webcam) as metaphor.
BIO
Catherine Banks
England, UK
Lives and works in England
EXHIBITIONS
2019 | Time, Lightbox Gallery, Woking, UK
PUBLICATIONS
2019 | Edge-Zine, Silent Pool Edge-zine Issue 7 Summer edition online.
Related Activities
Exhibitions, Together Apart
#3 | FRONTIER: results
Artists in dialogue
10.03.21
Frontiers as geopolitical frontiers, as cultural, biopolitical; frontiers as limits and as separations within the artistic disciplines, frontiers as hegemonic considerations of our bodies and identities…were some of the approaches on FRONTIER general theme in the Together Apart Program #3 session.
Through 4 encounters we collectively and individually created ideas and artworks which explored a non-binary approach of the topic. The participant artists also had the possibility to dialogue with Kristina Borg and Liz Ingram & Bernd Hildebrant, international artists and former ´ace artists-in-residence, invited to present their contributions and explorations in relation to the topic. For this session we also gave priority to moments of peer review or collective feedback and to open discussions which drifted through issues of art and therapy, art and research, participatory art, the complexity of artistic collaboration and how collective practice appears to be a right to claim even more in moments of isolation.
Through different theoretical readings and artistic references, and through the proposals of each of the participant artists, we identified the importance of liminal states, the non-binary, we assumed the difficulty of inhabiting the in-between but also recognized that art practice is what allows us to live in ambiguous states and to constantly raise questions. We also explored other practices as breathing techniques, meditation and knowledge and skills sharing as methods to break through discriminative or isolating frontiers.
Using poetry, film, online performances, video art and the creation of a network for artists through the method of “participatory asset mapping”, the artists from this cohort created in search of commonalities in their migrant’s everyday experiences, resonances among the natural conditions of the places they live in, the links among their identities and psychological researches and in search of practical collaborations to continue working in the future.
DANIELA RUIZ MORENO | curator-in-residence
