SELECTED PROJECTS
2016-2020
THE NIGHT THE MOUNTAINS MOVED
(2020)
Hand-cut digital prints on blue-backed billboard paper, collaged onto the wall
2.6m x 9m
Commissioned by Wellcome-MRC Stem Cell Institute in partnership with Blood Cancer UK and Kettle's Yard, for the public lobby of Jeffery Cheah Biomedical Centre at Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
FUTURAMIC UNKNOWN
(2020)
6 mins.
Futuramic Unknown is the creative outcome of a 6-week project bringing together artist Anna Brownsted with ambassadors for Blood Cancer UK and blood stem cell researchers from Wellcome-MRC Stem Cell Institute. Through a series of stop-motion animation workshops, participants worked from a box of materials delivered to their homes to develop hand-cut animation sequences exploring their experiences of ‘the unknown’ in relation to living with cancer, the challenges of research and the global uncertainties of COVID-19. The sequences have been edited together with a composition by Will Heasman.
Commissioned by Wellcome-MRC Stem Cell Institute as part of its Public Engagement programme, in partnership with Blood Cancer UK and Kettle's Yard.
WEEK NINE
(2020)
16 mins.
A soundtrack for headphones and an isolated room
A Fermynwoods Contemporary Art + Cambridge Junction
Homemakers commission
IDLE HOUR R&D
(2020)
R&D for a choreographed intervention set in a public square with an immersive soundtrack, Idle Hour explores time outside of everyday experience and asks how do we conduct ourselves when we've got nothing to do?
Supported by Arts Council England and Cambridge Junction.
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT
(2019)
03 August - 27 September
Landguard Fort, Felixstowe
A site-responsive sound installation set in the atmospheric tunnels of Landguard Fort. Several adjoining rooms are temporarily transformed into an immersive environment where the past collides with the present as time expands, contracts, and circles in on itself.
With references spanning socio-political histories, familial military connections and the charged architecture of the fort itself, the installation features bespoke seating and a collage of meditative soundscapes using local field recordings and archival broadcasts.
Visitors are invited to sit, listen, and dwell within the ambient spaces.
Commissioned by Pier Projects, delivered in partnership with Landguard Fort and generously supported by Arts Council England, Felixstowe Town Council and East Suffolk Council
9TH AND CASTLE
choreographed intervention
(2018)
A commissioned live work responding to Richard Pousette-Dart, devised in collaboration with an ensemble of adolescent girls and performed in the House at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge.
THE GOLD 45 PROTOTYPE
Limited edition 7" flexidisc book, playable at 33 1/3 RPM
(2019)
A proposed sequel to NASA's 1977 Voyager Golden Record, updating the extraterrestrials on what we've been doing down here on Earth for the past 40 years. Made in collaboration with over 470 Cambridge residents, the prototype features greetings, sounds, music and original artwork responding to a democratically selected list of 'the most significant developments since 1978'.
Supported by Arts Council England, Cambridge Junction, University of Cambridge and Kettle's Yard
Sounds of Earth 2.0 (2:11)
Selected and recorded with YR 5 students at St. Matthew's Primary School
PROTOTYPE EPHEMERA
Paper, velvet, acrylic
(2019)
A series of hand-cut paper collages created for The Gold 45 Prototype, individually framed in acrylic display cases.
PENCE STERLING
Quayside, Cambridge
48-hour intervention involving 100,000 pennies and a disused public fountain
(2018)
Commissioned by Other Ways and supported by Cambridge City Council
AFTERWARD
Mixed media archive
(2018)
International media coverage and documentation of Pence Sterling, a 48-hr temporary intervention that carried on far longer than expected.
PERFECT DAY
Radio micro-documentaries
2017
Perfect Day is a series of micro-documentaries about the joy of possibility. The concept for the programme unfolded from an interest in creating an opportunity for people to divulge a pleasurable fantasy to a complete stranger.
Co-commissioned by Cambridge Junction and Cambridge City Council for Hunt & Darton's 24-hour Radio Local, the series was made by knocking on doors of residents' homes and dropping into businesses, inviting people to talk about their idea of a ‘perfect day’. The resulting conversations were often intimate and surprisingly frank, revealing fantasies that range from simple and heartfelt to humorous and grand.
THE BREAD PROJECT
(2017)
A collaborative social project designed to celebrate diversity, The Bread Project is a series of recipe exchanges and intercultural skills sharing sessions with community groups across North Cambridge.
The Bread Project was commissioned by Kettle's Yard in support of Harold Offeh's Open House artist residency, and culminated in a recipe publication and community bread-making during The Gathering, an Open House public event.
DIPLOMAT
digital film cycle
(2016)
Commissioned by Fermynwoods Contemporary Art
'A sly little video work...like a message from another planet.'
Adrian Searle, Guardian review (02/02/18)
Diplomat is a digital installation of 100 short films programmed to continuously cycle through a random playing order. The individually numbered films are edited from a single-take shot of the artist performing a 7-hour durational action in response to the 2016 US presidential election. The number of films references the post-inaugural ‘first 100 days’, with a film for each of the president’s first 100 days in office.
The action begins with a warped record – a memorial album issued in 1964 featuring speeches by the then-recently assassinated American president John F. Kennedy. Purchased for $1.00 at a flea market in rural Wyoming, the record is heat-damaged and almost comically warped. The durational filming concentrates on repetitive playing of Kennedy’s inaugural address, which is considered by many to be one of the most inspirational speeches in contemporary Western history. Due to the warping, each time the record is played a different variation of the speech is revealed. The needle bounces across the contorted surface, repeating certain phrases while completely skipping over others. What was once a consistent, fixed form becomes fragmented. Kennedy’s rhetoric is dissected through chance and his message edited at random, disrupting the polished theatricality of the speech as a performative piece of history.
Over the 7 hours of repeated playing, the record begins to deteriorate. Highlighting its own fragility, the act of playing it destroys it.