We are a non-profit, artist-led residency, project, and meeting space in Redruth, Cornwall.
Whilst we remain closed to the public, we are pleased to announce that artists are now using the project space on an individual basis again.
We are very grateful to be in receipt of public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England’s Emergency Response Fund.
Sovay Berriman
This August we welcome Sovay Berriman to the Back Lane West project space for a residency supported by public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England’s Emergency Response Fund.
Throughout the social restrictions of COVID 19 Sovay like so many of us has missed hugging her friends and family, and casually touching the shoulder or arm of any person with whom she is chatting in the street, a shop, a bar… She says “I think of my Gran, now dead, who missed touching and being touched once she became house-bound. Then with a move to a Cornwall Care home touch was renewed and the gentle carers would make a point of touching, hand holding and head stroking. It became clearer to me then what an intimacy we share, even with strangers or those we cannot precisely remember, when we touch.”
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Robin Dowell
This July we welcome back Back Lane West associate artist Robin Dowell. His residency is supported by public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England’s Emergency Response Fund.
As a lecturer teaching online throughout lockdown, Robin like so many of us experienced a melding of work and domestic spaces. So it was perhaps inevitable that the daily space he carved out for his practice became the lockdown ritual of one hour’s exercise, which he used to explore as many unfamiliar bridleways as possible on his bike. Over time he began to see more and more discarded latex gloves on the roads and verges he cycled. Although resentful of the thoughtless littering and repulsed by their implied potential to infect, he found himself drawn to the potential narratives surrounding their unknown owners (who are they? What heroic acts may they have just done?). These encounters will inform a new print project Non-contact.
Robin also intends to spend some of his time reviewing two of his recent projects through a post-Covid lens; Free Walk a 2018 zine made in response to a concern about the use of personal data online, made newly relevant by the development of tracking apps; and Official Secrets, an on-going collaborative project with William Arnold which draws on their mutual fascination with the secretive MOD site at Nancekuke, an early iteration of which was shared at Back Lane West in January 2019.
Bram Thomas Arnold