Current Artist in Residence
Current Artist in Residence HARCOURT ARTIST IN RESIDENCE 201/2012
SYDNEY LANCASTER
Sydney Lancaster, title in the making..., gel transfer, 2012
See what our Artist in Residence has been up to >>
Sydney Lancaster is an Edmonton-based mixed media visual artist, writer and musician. She has studied Canadian experimental writing at the University of Alberta, worked as an arts administrator at Latitude 53, and volunteered with organizations supporting the visual arts, human rights, and housing security for the past 30 years. Her work – which employs mixed-media assemblage, gel transfer printing, and installation re-assembles the relationships between objects, images, words, and actions, and reflects upon the relationship between internal and external landscapes. She is fascinated by the ways in which private and public stories intersect, and are edited and changed over time, and how we ‘map’ our sense of place, security, and belonging – or lack of it – through objects and markers of place.
Sydney brings tremendous energy and drive to the Artist in Residence Program at Harcourt House; she is looking forward to the work she will do, and becoming an active part of Harcourt’s community. In her own words:
“The Artist-in-Residence Program at Harcourt House is a tremendous opportunity to devote an entire uninterrupted year to the production of a coherent body of new work. It is a rare thing for an artist to be provided with the the kind of support Harcourt House provides through this program - support for artists to take real risks and develop their practice within a creative community. I am thrilled to be named the next Harcourt House A.I.R., and look forward to exploring the many ways this residency will allow me to develop my work and skills. I feel very fortunate to be granted this opportunity to be a part of the Harcourt House community, and to contributing actively to it now and in the future.”
In addition to working on this project, Lancaster is planning to host open studio events, and keeping an active online journal of the progress of her work over the year. Check the Harcourt House website for updates and events!
Her residency will focus on the development of an entirely new sequence of works in various media that consider the nest as an object in space and time, but also as a marker of symbolic and emotional content. So familiar and yet so foreign, birds’ nests occupy liminal and contradictory space emotionally and physically. Nests are a source of protection and contain the potential for growth and renewal; but nests also remain exposed to the elements, placed in precarious locations, positioned between earth and sky.
“Mankind’s nest, like his world, is never finished. And imagination helps us to continue it.”
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Ch. 4
Additional information / images are available on Sydney’s website >>
For more information on the Harcourt House Artist in Residence Program, please contact Brittney Roy, Harcourt House, 780.426.4180
© 2012 Harcourt House Artist Run Centre