Join us for our July online artist peer group!
Established in 2015 our artist peer groups are an opportunity for artists exploring health and wellbeing in their practice to gain feedback and support on their projects, ideas or challenges that they are facing. The space is for active feedback, meaning that artists aren’t sharing finished works, but asking for specific support from others attending the session. Together we pool resources and provide feedback in a supportive environment.
Our presenting artists for this session are Shona Morgan and Elena Burciu. Read on to find out more about their work and what they’ll be sharing. This session is facilitated by artists Paloma Tendero and Gimara Duncan-Rice.
Want to share your work at a future group? Fill out our application form.
Cost.
Free
Image: Shona Morgan
About Shona
Shona is a Bristol-based artist with an interest in mental health, belonging and the ways in which creativity, alongside the conversations it sparks, can become a tool towards our resilience. Shona uses her practice as a space to reflect upon and intuitively explore her experiences; shining a light on difficult feelings and searching for nuance, commonality and renewed understanding. Bringing together photography, text and conversations, their creative practice allows Shona to slowly examine the narrative threads of life and ask questions without expecting simple or linear answers; leaning into uncertainty and hoping to nurture kinship, tenderness and the feeling of being seen.
“This work in progress - A Hundred Other Days - was initially inspired by moments in literature where a sentence, a paragraph pierces through and pins down some very specific feeling or sense of things. Photography and the written word can be lines of connection to the world, even when you’re alone - during a time of change in my life I began writing in an old diary and taking polaroids, wanting to put a finger on these slippery and complex feelings.
These two approaches have become tools to manage emotional dysregulation. The polaroids are an instantaneous emotional outlet, a way of marking the moment: my feeling takes on physical form and is placed within the emulsion, internal currents become carried in the spaces around me. As the outside world is coloured by our own internal world and by the past, which is always present, a few sunflowers tone the whole image in profuse yellow; another soaks up the deep, warm blues of a summer evening. As the polaroids pile up, they are reminders of all the times that I’ve had these feelings before and watched them pass. I can hold in my hands a hundred other days.”
About Elena
Elena is a theatre practitioner, inquisitive storyteller, drama facilitator and creative writer who trained at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She has recently worked with dementia patients, young individuals struggling with their mental health and theatre projects with individuals struggling with addiction and police officers: the latter being the most inspiring in her practice. The project explored several difficult issues through improvisation while encouraging communication and empathy between NYPD officers and members of the community.
Elena has always been passionate about the he benefits of theatre and the arts in individuals’ mental health and well-being. Her company, Dosinia, focuses on engaging with individuals who suffer from hormonal imbalances. At the present their work is mostly dedicated to individuals suffering from type 1 Diabetes and Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, known as PMDD.
Elena takes her participants on a weekly journey while exploring some of their struggles with creative tools. These workshops last for 4 to 8 weeks and end in a final mash-up performance which ends taking different forms according to the participants and their journeys.