Art360 x ICF Curator in Residence Announced

We are thrilled to announce that Hope Strickland has been selected as Curator/Researcher in Residence at Art360 Foundation working with the archive of British-Guyanese artist Aubrey Williams. The residency is designed to encourage and facilitate new and dynamic readings of Williams’ work and practice through an active engagement with the archive.

Supported by ICF, Hope will review the materials – such as exhibition documents, photographs, personal correspondence, press clippings and political documents – in the archive and develop a new strand of research and analysis over the coming months.

Hope Strickland is a visual artist and ethnographic researcher from Manchester, UK. Her interests span feminist ecologies, the Black radical imagination and archival response: previous projects include an experimental documentary with the Windrush generation in South Manchester, using both archival materials and footage shot in a day centre for the Caribbean elderly. Hope will be commencing a practice-led PhD at UCL this September, exploring Haitian, female water deities as an opportunity for Black agency and watery resistance.

Through a nation-wide open call in May 2020 Art360 Foundation and International Curators Forum invited curators and researchers interested in engaging with and developing work around Williams’ archive to apply for the opportunity.

Born in Guyana, Williams is credited as being one of the most important post-war British painters, noted for bringing together a spectrum of visual references and cultural perspectives in his work. Trained as an agronomist, Williams held an array of interests from pre-Columbian iconography, classical music and ornithology, and was a founding member of the Caribbean Artists Movement.

Williams’ archive is currently held at Art360 Foundation in London, and work on it archive was underway before Covid-19, with documentation and reporting on the contents of the archive close to completion. Although physical access to the archive won’t be possible until social isolation measures change, Hope will utilise existing records to begin preliminary research remotely. The residency will continue with direct access to the archive at a future date and will run until February 2021.