In celebration of Cob’s ten-year anniversary we are proud to launch a new artist residency programme, set within bespoke onsite artist studios. Cob pledges to support artists at the very beginning of their career by providing studio space in the heart of London, artistic support, and a final exhibition.
The gallery was founded on the principle of nurturing artists and supporting the artistic community, and from conception, space within the premises had been allocated to artists. A portion of the building has now been remodelled with functioning artist studios, to accommodate a full-time residency programme.
In 2021, Cob have invited two London based initiatives to collaborate. We are excited to announce that these inaugural residences will be presented by HOME by Ronan McKenzie, and PLOP founded by artist Oli Epp and curator Aindrea Emelife.
For more information about residency opportunities please contact our Studio Manager Madeleine Dunnigan.
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Cob x PLOP
Beginning in August 2021, Plop will host several, one-month residency programmes for emerging and early-career artists. Each residency will culminate in an exhibition in the studios at Cob.
Our selection panel included Marcelle Joseph, collector and founder of Artlandapp, Claus Busch Risvig, collector and lawyer Jeremy Levison, and historian and curator, Aindrea Emelife. We were bowled over by the quality of the applications, and it was very difficult to select only 12 artists from over 400 applications.
Because of this, we have added an extra International Residency in January 2022, offering the opportunity to make work to 3 more artists.
We are thrilled to share some of the best UK and International emerging talent with you.
Summer Residency: 12 August–8 September
To view the Summer Residency online viewing room please click here.
Autumn Residency: 16 September–13 October
Madinah Thompson
Winter Residency: 21 October–17 November
International Residency 1: 22 November–19 December
International Residency 2: 31 January–28 February
Artists will be supported by resident mentors, curator and artist Rosalind Davis and art historian Hector Campbell. Alongside this, they will be visited by special guests.
Many opportunities for emerging artists and recent graduates, like Degree Shows and art openings, have been squashed by the pandemic. By opening up dialogues between artists, and fostering a new, creative synergy, I hope PLOP can help redress this and contribute to London’s cultural landscape post-covid. We want to amplify those new voices in the UK’s art scene who have an innovate and original approach to art making and who consider how their practice is reflective of current life and contemporary culture. – Oli Epp, co-founder of Plop.
PLOP Residency was founded by artist Oli Epp and curator Aindrea Emelife in 2019. PLOP is a residency run by artists for artists and has provided free artist studios, mentorship and industry visits to 48 artists from over four continents. The artists that took part in PLOP created communities where ideas, thoughts and opinions could be freely shared. Previous artists who have taken part in the residency include: Sarah Slappey, Andrew Pierre Hart, Stine Deja, Hunter Potter and Cathrin Hoffmann. They have gone on to have international and solo exhibitions, and forged long-standing communities that cross continents.
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Cob x HOME
Residency: 17th May – 30th June
Exhibition: 8th July – 24th July
Please join us for the HOME x Cob End of Residency Exhibition: Parts of Self, of residents Hannah Lim and Courtenay Welcome, which opens Thursday 8th July, at Cob Gallery. The show will run from 8th–24th July at in the studios at Cob and online on HOME's website.
The public are invited to view the exhibition according to social distancing guidelines in timed slots. You can book your visit here.
Parts of Self is the final show of the HOME x Cob Residency, a 6-week residency programme for two BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) Women-identifying Artists – hosted by HOME within the newly remodelled Cob Studios. Residents received a stipend and materials budget, thanks to Glossier for sponsoring the programme.
The exhibition is a celebration of the work made, research undertaken, and time spent in the studios, over these past six weeks. It explores identity, space and form, and how the three interact within the close walls of the studio.
We are interested in how sharing a space can inform the work of two practitioners working across different mediums and from alternate perspectives. This residency is an exploration of how mediums or creative thinking can merge, and the impact this has on both practitioners and viewers. – Ronan McKenzie, Director of Home
Hannah Lim is a sculptor whose practice explores the colonial connotations between East and West, as manifested in Orientalism and its relationship to the Chinoiserie. Recently she has been creating peculiar, somewhat furniture-like structures. These pieces combine motifs and imagery from both Chinese and European furniture design. In doing so she attempts to re-imagine and reclaim ideas and designs associated with the Chinoiserie, which have in the past had problematic colonial undertones. Cultural designs are shared as opposed to appropriated, it is no longer about one culture being moulded to the demands of another.
The residency has been a great opportunity to start bridging different elements of my practice; combining smaller ceramic pieces, larger flat pack sculptures and drawings. Whilst making I’ve been considering the ornamental nature of the objects I create and how these objects have become an extension of myself. Ornaments and ornamental things have historically been used to depict East Asian and South-East Asian women, categorising, personifying and fetishising their identities. I want to explore these ideas, breaking them down and reconstructing them. – Hannah Lim
Courtenay Welcome is an Artist, Activist, Creative Director and Critical Thinker based between Bristol and Birmingham. Her work explores the rich complexities of race, memory, space and time through painting, installation, text and performance. These explorations tackle, mimic, reconstruct and shift the perspective of universal ‘truths’ within the white walls of the Western art world.Welcome depicts the sense of self though lived experiences. Documenting transitions from one embodiment to another, while critically addressing the ways in which these transitions are perceived by institutional means. All informed by a critical infrastructure of decolonisation.
This residency is an opportunity for me to practice different modes of thought and art making. I am carving out space and through this have been confronted with how to depict a sense of self: and its relationship to time, space and consciousness. I’m interested in how to expand the frame to incorporate and reflect the biracial gaze and experience; in how to decolonise the mind and open up the critical landscape for new and better ways to communicate and love now and in the future. – Courtenay Welcome
Born out of the necessity for a truly accessible art space with both a well curated presentation of exhibitions, and a wide programme of events, HOME is one of very few black owned art spaces in London. Founded by Ronan Mckenzie to create a distinct space with a new set of understandings of how to contextualise a diverse range of artists, building on personal experiences of institutions and providing a new infrastructure for creativity.
With a leading focus on supporting Black and Indigenous People of Colour, HOME aligns with the contemporary economic climate, with a considered curatorial and events offerings pertaining to the work of BIPOC artists in a context that thoroughly understands them from the inside out. Alongside exhibitions, HOME presents a community focussed events programme and creative work space which aim to encourage, share and support. HOME is a malleable concept which transforms and responds to the artists it houses and the community it is built for.
