Residency

Residency: 17^th May – 30^th June

Exhibition: 8^th July – 24^th 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.