Resident

About

Exhibition Opening: Tuesday 28th January 2020, 5 to 8pm

Beginning of 2018 Claudia Pilsl undertook a 3 months residency at x-church in Gainsborough. Her proposition to the community was to explore the question What does it mean to be a resident?. For this she spent time with everybody who was willing to let her join in and become, if only temporary, part of their lives. The wish to understand better what it means to be a UK resident stems from her increasing anxiety about the status of EU citizens post Brexit. Having lived longer in England than in Austria, the country of her birth, the place she identifies with most is not a particular country but Europe as a whole. For her as a migrant and future EU guest-worker it is therefore not easy to define what means to be a resident within the borders of a nation state.

The main piece in the exhibition is a video (1h 44min) in which the artist merges footage from a long drive in a white van around Gainsborough and an audio track edited from over 15 hours of recorded interviews during her residency. These conversations center on what it means to be a resident, how it is to live in his area, what the future could hold for this small market town. The two exhibited series of photographs were generated during a walk with Clive Maclennan, a resident of the south West Ward in Gainsborough, and during various sessions at x-church. As part of the exhibition, the artist also hosts the pop-up gallery Chateau Marcus, a temporary show space in an old shed. This shed initially intended as a studio during her stay soon became a show space for local artists. As an exhibition space within the exhibition Chateau Marcus will show a series of works by Joana Cifre Cerdà, Clive Maclennan, Kev Snell, Knaithan Parks. Also on display will the collaborative project facilitated by Michael Bowdidge: Slumgothic Live Collage and a slideshow of the arts activities at x-church from 2006 till today.

Bio:

Claudia Pilsl is a photographer and media artist based in Bristol and Vienna. She creates installations and projection works and engages diverse audiences in and beyond the gallery space. Her work is included in major collections such as the Museum of modern Art Vienna, Kestner Gesellschaft Hannover, the DG Bank Collection, the Art Collection of Upper Austria, SK Stiftung Cologne, and the Photo Collection Austria. She won two major fellowships (Arts Council Austria, City of Bremen), the Prize for Visual Art of Upper Austria, and a Research Fellowship at Southampton Institute. She has just submitted her doctoral practice research on ‘Photography and its Contribution to the Understanding of Digital Porosity’ at the University of Plymouth (Funding by The 3D3 Center for Doctoral Training Programme). Prior to starting her doctoral inquiry, she undertook an MA in Photography and Urban Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London (2013) and an MA in Combined Media at University of Applied Arts in Vienna (1994).