Visual Conversations is the conclusion of a one-year Residency for Artist and Researcher Abigail Hunt within the Bristol+Bath Creative R+D Programme

The conclusion of a one-year Residency for Artist and Researcher Abigail Hunt within the Bristol+Bath Creative R+D Programme

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Background:
Bristol+Bath Creative R+D Programme

Bristol+Bath Creative R+D is a five year programme looking to raise the bar for the region’s creative industries, running from 2018 to 2023. Creating opportunities rooted in collaborations, for businesses, creatives, artists and thinkers to experiment with new and emerging technologies, connect with one another, and develop prototype products and experiences. This has included connections to 332 creative companies and freelancers, 34 new international collaborations, the introduction of 72 new creative prototypes and 634 public appearances. B+B has had more than 320 blogs, reports and other outputs and over 1.5m engagements with the public. This first-of-a-kind collaboration between the region’s four universities – UWE Bristol, Bath Spa, the University of Bath and the University of Bristol – and digital creativity centre Watershed, it intends to connect the worlds of university research and creative business to develop a shared vision for tomorrow’s creative Industries.

Residency

Abigail Hunt was invited in September 2022 to explore the Bristol+Bath Creative R+D Programme within an Artist Residency. Abigail was able to meet and connect with many of the individuals and collaborators involved across multiple stands of the project. Spending time in both cities, she was involved in many inspiring conversations, knowledge exchange and the sharing of personal stories and individual learnings that B+B had enabled.

Abigail’s practice is rooted in collaboration, so a key part of the first stage of residency for her was to engage, involve and work alongside art students from both UWE and Bath Spa University. Their shared exploration and understanding of specific aspects of the B+B Programme has been invaluable to Abigail’s research. An excellent example of this collaboration was at the Hopeful Futures which enabled a shared action where students worked alongside Abigail and together made live artworks and visual responses to the findings of the programme and created a ‘public working wall’ of ideas and a live streamed film of the actions.

Other aspects of the residency saw Abigail inviting artists, academics, students, technologists, and creatives to join her in a walk from Bath to Bristol, marking the boundary line between the two cities through a series of discussions and making activities.

Throughout her time on the residency Abigail has collected and collated conversations, quotes and images. Abigail is interested in the ‘pieces left on the table’ and the things captured and created between the main events of the B+B programme. Through her investigations she focused on a responding to the more personal aspects of the wider project. She aimed to visualise individual experiences, bringing each together to consider new ways we can each witness the separate parts and share our reflections differently.is a five year programme looking to raise the bar for the region’s creative industries, running from 2018 to 2023. Creating opportunities rooted in collaborations, for businesses, creatives, artists and thinkers to experiment with new and emerging technologies, connect with one another, and develop prototype products and experiences. This has included connections to 332 creative companies and freelancers, 34 new international collaborations, the introduction of 72 new creative prototypes and 634 public appearances. B+B has had more than 320 blogs, reports and other outputs and over 1.5m engagements with the public. This first-of-a-kind collaboration between the region’s four universities – UWE Bristol, Bath Spa, the University of Bath and the University of Bristol – and digital creativity centre Watershed, it intends to connect the worlds of university research and creative business to develop a shared vision for tomorrow’s creative Industries.

Artwork:
Visual Conversations

Visual Conversations marks the end of the residency, but it also celebrates the potential of partnerships across Bristol and Bath and the possibility of being inspired by shared conversations, actions and collaboration that continue to considering the intrinsic and social value of art. Placing artworks in public locations across the two cities, Abigail’s art looks to visualise the possibilities of creating space for sharing and making art. She is inspired how art can present different ways of looking and thinking on multiple levels and the lasting impact this has on society.

For Visual Conversations Abigail has created a new series of 10 abstract hand cut paper collages that reference solid sculptural forms. The imagery incorporated into each, has been gifted to her by individuals that she has met and worked with during her residency. Many of the images shared with Abigail were personal reflections on the wider B+B programme. These images came with stories and anecdotes attached, contributions with carefully considered reasons.

Using these generously shared images as a collective visual reflection of the impact of B+B, Abigail reconfigured them creating new connections between the pieces. The idea of ‘Visual Conversations’ being comprised of the multiple pieces, people and places that have fed into the wider project, Abigail is interested in the sheer scale of B+B and the affect it has had on the creative communities in each city. The final works created reference the probable impossibility of any one single person, due to the vast reach of the programme, being able to have a fully engage with every aspect and output.

The installation of poster versions of the collages shown at varying scales around a variety of locations in both Bristol and Bath (during November and December 2023) brings the work out into non art and publicly accessible spaces where it can be viewed at any time of the day or night becoming part of the cities urban environment. From train stations to universities, cycle paths to significant buildings, viewers may come across these artworks by chance, or can deliberately seek them out. Whether they see just one of them, a few, or even all of them, Abigail is interested both by the impossibility of experiencing all these parts simultaneously, and also by the fact that every viewer will have a different experience of seeing the work. She feels this expresses the sense of the scale of the B+B Programme, the huge variety of experiences and happenings it has supported and the concept of placemaking between Bristol and Bath.

As well as the posters, this website serves as a legacy of the artworks, detailing not just the finished collages, but also the scraps, snippets and the parts left behind of images and words collected along the journey of the residency. Constantly making new connections and associations between the fragments, Abigail’s residency and final artwork is about the role of the artist in looking differently, exploring how we can take apart and re-see things, and how we might put things back together in new and refreshing combinations. These Visual Conversations are about involving others in a collaborative process, being more aware of the connections between us and the directions we might take each other in.

Thank You

Huge thanks are extended to the partner sites who have supported Visual Conversations:

44AD Gallery
Arnolifini
The Assembly Rooms, National Trust
Bath Artist Studios
Bath Spa University
Bricks
Bristol Temple Meads Station
Centrespace, Bristol
The Galleries, Bristol
Great Western Railway
Hamilton House
The Holburne Museum
The Island, Bristol
Milsom Place
MShed
No1 Bath Quays
Pervasive Media Studio
St Anne’s House
Severnside Rail
The Studio, Bath
University of Bath
University of Bristol
UWE, Bristol
Watershed

Collaboration

Throughout the residency Abigail has been grateful to be able to meet and work alongside many people and organisations across both Bristol and Bath. Huge thanks go to everyone who gave their time and support throughout, to all who were part of the walks and events during the residency and to all those who gifted imagery for use in the final collage artworks.

Particular thanks go to Caroline Ansty, Creative Producer and the team of Artist Assistants – Katya Hall, Katie Hanning and Guy Undrill – all recent graduates of both Bath Spa and UWE who helped to bring together Visual Conversations. Each of them an artist in their own right, collaborating with them was a huge part of the project and it has been a privilege to work alongside them. Their own individual practices are detailed here:

Katya Hall
Katya Hall considers herself a crafty rigger, location enthusiast, friendly thinker, woven writer, scrap finder, conversation hunter, community collaborator and workshop lover. A multi-disciplinary creative, with a keen interest in community arts, set design, events and the stories that can be told through art, Katya mostly works collaboratively with others, finding the snowball effects of shared practice brings her both joy and direction. Producing sculptures, audio pieces, videos, photographs, workshops and events that grow by exploring the connection between people and places, her key focus is on supporting and encouraging people to come together to share skills and find new communities.
@katyahall.art

Katie Hanning
Working predominantly in public space, through collaborative processes and co-creation, Katie Hanning creates places, situations, activity & interventions, that generate active participation with experimentation of new ways of being, doing and knowing.

Exploring the notion of collective knowledge, Katie invites the audience encountering her work to not only explore the explicit information that is being presented, but also the space between this information. 
www.katiehanning.com 

Guy Undrill
Guy Undrill came to art late in life and almost by accident. His practice seems rooted in making sense of that decision, trying to understand what it is to be an artist. Often making work where the conceptual components are conspicuously recycled, for Guy the language of origins and originality, progress and intellectual property isn’t particularly useful and instead he thinks of the work as haunted, perhaps occupied by the spirits of past artists with whom he is a respectful collaborator. This has led to an interest in ghosts, magic and augury. Guys practice incorporates prints, photos, installations, film, video, sound pieces and performance often with a direct interaction with the viewer.
www.guyundrill.com

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