Many of our Fellows are beginning to submit their research responses from their month in Venice. The Fellowship opportunity gives them time to explore Venice and interpret the city through artistic practice and writing.
We wanted to share with you a couple of the first research projects:
Lumen prints inspired by the Venetian lagoon and islands
Polly Palmerini from Manchester School of Art decided to document eight Venetian islands by creating a series of lumen prints. She placed unexposed paper in different places on the eight islands: some of these show subtle changes, because of the light and where they were placed, whereas others hide what they were meant to show and produce a new image.
“Can a lumen print be comparable to Venice’s present precarious existence? The threatening changes to its existence, like the lumen print, are imperceptible, slow and hidden to the outsider.
I was struck by how many visitors come to Venice to mourn it: to see it before it “dies” and mourn its loss, when really there is nothing to mourn and everything to save.” Polly Palmerini
Patterns inspired by Fortuny, a Venice-based producer of handmade printed fabrics
Lotte Crawford from Coventry University decided to develop a series of repeat patterns influenced by Fortuny, textile themes in the Biennale and visual motifs in Venice. Her research also reflects her PhD project on mid-century textile designer Enid Marx.
”Unsurprisingly, alongside the vaporetti trips, ciccetti and culture of the place, much of my time in Venice was taken with contemplating the cities physical actuality, its architectural and aesthetic qualities and its temporal amalgamations of haphazard design adorning the streets.
Fundamentally the process has helped me to understand and engage more fully with the method of block printing, which is not only useful for my thesis but also a fabulous foil for my academic work and for re-visioning and remembering this incredible experience.“
Lotte Crawford
You can also read an article that Lotte wrote about the Fortuny exhibition Intuition in Venice, which was related to the Venice Biennale theme of Viva Arte Viva.
Read her article in the Taylor and Francis Journal of Art and Visual Practice (JVAP)
We look forward to receiving more Venice-inspired submissions from our Fellows and sharing them with you over the coming months.
