11/10/2023
Fellow Reader,
I never expected to be writing to you, let alone writing to you so publicly. So exposed. I keep my research to myself, but generally, my research has functioned for grades so now leaving academia as a student, at least for a short while, it makes sense to expose it. Expose it? Release it, for it to be free and accessible, conversational almost? I always struggle to explain my work, because there are so many things to say. So many layers that a 500-word count didn’t do justice. Maybe it’s time for you to read along and find out.
The thing is, I don’t want to work on this alone. In leaving university, I leave behind a cohort. The comfort of community. We might not be on the same journey, but I would like to invite you to follow along with me while I venture through the archive, waging my way through making new work.
I got the call yesterday that I have been selected as the Artist fellow for the 2023-24 Whitworth Wallis Fellowship, with Birmingham Museums Trust and Birmingham School of Art, my BFA and MFA Alma mater. It feels like finishing my Master’s was a mile away in regard to everything that has happened both professionally and personally since and yet in actuality, I have only spent just over a month away before returning. Well, it will take time before I can return to make work, but it feels so exciting to already expand on my legacy with the building after I just said goodbye. Something ties me back to those red bricks and mortar again and again. Finding out I got the position while in the studio with my co-studio holder/friend was a special moment and then I got to tell my mum straight away about it over the phone; it feels like an acute universal alignment.
I’m passively superstitious. Last week when I bought a coat from a charity shop I had been looking for, I was content in finding the right winter coat. It wasn’t until I was heading to an interview last Friday that I realised the coat had the same name as what I was being interviewed for, it felt like quite the perfect sign. I was cautious about telling anyone about the interview or that I had the interview, or even how I had felt about it, because sometimes it feels as if you speak about things too soon, they never flourish and the flower ultimately wilts. Perhaps it’s just a gut feeling given too much meaning, maybe I know the outcome better than I’m happy to admit at the moment. When you know the flower will flourish beyond the power of word, you just know.
Like I said, passively superstitious. I wouldn’t bet my life on any of these feelings. It’s like I generally say, bad or good things happen in threes. Is it a universal alignment to teach you these lessons, or is it just a pattern that happens just out of general circumstance? I quite literally do not know. Before I even applied, I briefly researched Sir Whitworth Wallis and the legacy the fellowship was upholding. I found a photo of him at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery amongst a sea of paintings, books, busts, and papers. It honestly looks like a researcher’s dream. Amongst the darkness and light, Wallis can be seen in his chair reading a paper. There is little I can speak to in terms of character or intent, the support and championing of the arts is clear and felt after all these years. To urge a return to the archives, to look back on history, and to discover how it can inform the present compliments myself and my practice in more ways than words can describe at this current moment.
Of course, this is only the beginning. There is so much more to report and say when I begin to enter the archives and truly dive deep into making new work again! How exciting is that?
I can’t wait to see where this journey will take me and to share it with you.
All my love,
Mads
Image sources:
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (1906) Postcard – Round Gallery Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, ca. 1906, Birmingham Museums Trust Photo Archive, Available at: https://dams.birminghammuseums.org.uk/asset-bank/action/viewAsset?id=12303&index=37&total=1000&view=viewSearchItem
Birmingham Museums Trust, Whitworth Wallis in His Office, Birmingham Museums Trust Photo archive, Available at: https://dams.birminghammuseums.org.uk/asset-bank/action/viewAsset?id=6221&index=18&total=91&view=viewSearchItem
Mads Washbrook 