Audrey Grant
Our Artist in Residence for the academic year 2023-24 is Audrey Grant. Audrey is an award-winning painter whose practice includes drawing, photography, and site-specific installation. Grant’s work is underpinned by intellectual ideas derived from, and inspired by, poetry, literature, and philosophy.
Audrey’s work will focus on the ancient Airthrey Estate where the University is located. Historic buildings, now ruinous, remain in this landscape within the lush Hermitage woods on the periphery of the modern University estate. Of the woods, she states that she will consider ‘the immensity of the forest and the hermit’s hut as a centre of concentrated solitude’: of the old and dilapidated cottages on campus ‘the house as an embodiment of dreams that collects and contains the past, present and future’: and of Logie Kirk and its ancient predecessor ‘the significance of the ruin’.
Audrey’s inspiration within the Art Collection theme of the year 2023/2024 ‘Campus as Inspiration’, includes ‘found sculptural environment and metaphorical palimpsest of the past, present and future’; ‘as a grounding to cultivate the poetical imagination, and the realms we inhabit indoors, outdoors and within the psyche’. Relooking at these ancient spaces and interpreting them artistically will constitute an innovative departure for the Art Collection and will encourage people to explore the landscape and take new inspiration from the campus itself.