Artist residency at RuptureXIBIT (+ Studio) – 6th – 26th February 2024, Hampton Wick, London

In February 2024 I undertook a 3 week residency in the gallery space at RuptureXIBIT in Hampton Wick, London. Unable to relocate to London for the duration of the residency due to my parenting responsibilities, my intervention was a hybrid format between occasional physical presence in the space and remote working from North Yorkshire. This approach to the residency was the basis of the work I undertook, as I explored how to connect and interact with a space when absent from it, employing a variety of different means to do so, including daily correspondence. My initial point of enquiry considered the relationship between motherhood, nature and creative practice, reflecting on how the words “care” “time” and “barriers” might connect across those concepts. Over the course of the three weeks I developed several pieces of work, which were put together in a final show and included a performance event, installations and interactive pieces.

“Dealing with themes of motherhood, absence and presence, time, and urban vs rural life, Jacqui transmits to the gallery daily in analogue and digital forms; through postcards, live feeds, and a keeping watch through a nanny cam. In this way, the studio becomes a second child to Jacqui, a third space between her rural home and urban London, where she tries to slow time to her speed.

Discussing the restraints put in place by societal factors around urban living and the expectations and demands of motherhood, Jacqui’s daily communications have sent messages of natural rhythms and rural life, from the personal and private in her home studio, to the roaring of tides climbing the screen behind Rupture’s front windows. 

From these digital broadcasts to handmade postcards, fragile with the daily reminder “please treat with care”, Jacqui has filled the space with temporal objects and momentary transportation.”

Text by Olivia England, RuptureXIBIT. Full text can be found here.