ABOUT
w20 Studio is a collaboration between two artists Kirsty Lowry and Liam Jolly. Support from a-n New Collaborations bursary award* has given them the opportunity to spend concentrated time sharing a studio and working together to experiment with and challenge their respective practice.
For this project they have worked to try and understand the nature of collaboration and when and why ideas, artworks, projects, audience and the relationships between them come together to make sense and when sometimes they don't.
Although there are evident connections in their work - both artists for example have a recurring curiosity in how art is viewed, considering and manipulating the audience experience as an inherent part of their work - other aspects of the project remain purposely embedded in the artists’ respective approaches.
Lowry’s predominant interest is in environmental psychology, considering how the environmental conditions of the spaces we build and inhabit affect mood, health, wellbeing and behaviour. Jolly is interested in challenging our assumptions about what we’re presented with, citing his work in the space between what something appears to be and what it actually is.
For ‘One for the Frog’ at Back Lane West, w20 Studio invited the audience into an interactive environment, in which the boundaries between art installation and social space become intentionally blurred.
This work in progress event was an opportunity for the artists to test what happens when their work and ideas become animated with the audience present.
* a-n is a national organisation that provides advice and opportunity in support of artists’ artistic and critical practices.
Frankly, this looks like it's going to be great fun! It features Kirsty Lowry and Liam Jolly, two artists working in Cornwall and London, both of whom are noted for their experimentation and playful investigations of art, design, perception and emotion. The image of them strung together, drawing, seems to sum up what their collaborative project has been exploring - when and why ideas work and the relationships between these ideas and the audience. I feel One for the Frog will be playful, courageous, experimental and entertaining. I'm definitely going to be there!'
VASW Guest Editor, Sara Bowler