Berwick Visual Arts Artist-in-Residence Stephanie Misa presents a new body of work produced during her residency in partnership with the Centre for Rural Economy at Newcastle University – a research centre specialising in interdisciplinary social science, researching rural development, policy and the well-being of rural communities.
The residency invites an artist to explore to explore current rural issues, changing concepts of rurality or rural identities whilst living and working in Berwick-upon-Tweed for 6 months.
Grandstand is a response to questions raised during by the artist during the residency such as what is the function of art in a rural town? Do tradition and identity evolve as the town’s population diversifies? And, who then is considered a “local”?
Grandstand is conceived as a site, a stage set for discussion. The installation activates the Gymnasium Gallery as a democratic forum with aim of engaging the public into seeing art as political, as performative, and as participatory.
Throughout the exhibition local artists, performers and groups will be invited to use the installation for meetings, performances or discussion – with the proviso that the events are open to all members of the public.
A sound piece and map accompany the Grandstand that explores the artist’s search for the ‘local’ through seemingly innocuous objects around Berwick.
Stephanie Misa is a Filipino-born, Austrian-based artist who works across a range of artistic disciplines including, sculpture, film, printmaking and sound. Using ethnographic methodology, her work examines questions of identity, immigration, and historical and cultural authenticity.
Graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts, in Vienna, previous projects include ‘The Schrebergarten (Untitled)’ – a two-part intervention concerned with discovering the social habits, activities and guidelines that govern an allotment garden community in Vienna and ‘A Colony of a Colony’; a project which reconstructed narratives of immigration and cultural exchange between the Philippines and Mexico during the height of the Spanish Empire through archival research, with a resulting installation at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm (KKH) and as part of the exhibit ‘Vienna Zocalo: Critical Crafting as a Postcolonial Strategy’ in Xalapa, Mexico.
