Forma Associate
Artists
Forma Associate Artists
A two-year partnership programme
The Forma Associate Artists programme is a professional development initiative for artists and cultural thinkers to have a continued working relationship with the organisation beyond the conventional commissioning and exhibition model. Launched as a two-year scheme, the mutually beneficial partnership reflects Forma's long-term engagement with the artists we have previously supported. Depending on the artist’s needs, Forma can offer the Associate Artists a unique combination of mentoring and networking support; resources and spaces; moments to research and experiment an idea and small income opportunities. In exchange, we hope to build a more meaningful connection to the artist and their practice.
The 2022-24 round of the Associate Programme includes Joseph Cutts, Cécile B. Evans, Gaia Di Lorenzo, Jameisha Prescod and Himali Singh Soin
Joseph Cutts
Joseph Cutts (b.1988, Nottingham) is an installation artist & curator based at Yorkshire Artspace in Sheffield. His artistic practice follows his research into everyday substances and technologies, reflecting their complex properties from a source, production, process driven and ecological perspective. Cutts’ works involving moving image are constructed using custom systems, where configuration and choreography is often met with unscripted fault.
In 2022 Cutts was awarded Arts Council funding to support his research into the cycle and formation of electronic waste, leading to curating the international group exhibition, screening and recycling programme Traces of a Cathode.
Selected recent exhibitions, residencies, publications & curatorial projects incl. STRIKE, Forma HQ, London (2023); Traces of a Cathode, S1 Artspace, Sheffield (2023); Colour, Form & Line', Graves Gallery Collection, Museums Sheffield (2023-24); S1 Salon, Showroom Cinema (2022); The Sound Intervention Service, Instytut Adama Mickiewicza, Warsaw & Online (2020-21); Construction House: Radical Materials, S1 Artspace, Sheffield (2019); H2O (Human Horizons Observatory), Bariloche/Buenos Aires (2019); Everything Flows, Museums Sheffield (2017). Cutts was previously Curator, S1 Artspace; Instytut Adama Mickiewicza and Head Curator of Sheffield DocFest’s Arts Programme (Alternate Realities), a programme aimed at studying the social and ecological impact of advancements in modern technology. Festival programmes incl. Ghosts & Apparitions (2020) & Subconscious Sensibilities, Site Gallery, Sheffield (2019). International touring programmes incl. Realidades Alternativas - CCE, Montevideo; Unibes, São Paulo; Centro Cultural San Martín, Buenos Aires; MUTEK MX, Mexico City & Center Phi, Montreal (2017-2018).
Joseph Cutts says:
Over the last 3 years Forma and I have shared conversations surrounding all things moving image, sound art and hybrid display, which has led to them generously supporting and challenging my practice in new and ambitious ways.
I am delighted to be welcomed into the Forma community as part of the Associate Artists Programme with an opportunity to expand my research into the cycle and formation of e-waste, localising this analysis and continuing to develop my current work in progress.
Cécile B. Evans
Cécile B. Evans is an American-Belgian artist living and working in Saint Denis. Evans’ work examines the value of emotion and its rebellion as it comes into contact with ideological, physical, and technological structures. They are currently artist in residence at Lafayette Anticipations, working on a new film that will premiere in Fall 2023. Evans has recently completed a major new commission for the Ulsan Art Museum (KOR), after having been on a residency with the National Ballet of Marseille in collaboration with the Kistefos Museum (NO) and exhibited a new installation commission at Centre Pompidou Paris (FR), all part of an multiversal adaptation of the Industrial Era ballet Giselle. Recent selected solo exhibitions include Tramway (UK), Tate Liverpool (UK), Castello di Rivoli (IT), 49 Nord 6 Est - Frac Lorraine (FR), Museum Abteiberg (DE), Chateau Shatto (US), Museo Madre (IT), mumok Vienna (AT), Galerie Emanuel Layr, Vienna (AT), Kunsthalle Aarhus (DK), M Museum Leuven (BE), De Hallen Haarlem (NL), and Serpentine Galleries (UK). Evans’ work has been included amongst others at Whitechapel Gallery (UK), Haus der Kunst (DE), Mito Art Tower (JP), Renaissance Society Chicago (US), the 7th International Moscow Biennale (RU), the 4th Ural Industrial Biennial (RU), Galerie Kamel Mennour (FR), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen (DK), the 9th Berlin Biennale (DE), the 20th Sydney Biennale (AUS), Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (ES), and Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (FR). Evans’ films have been screened in festivals such as the New York Film Festival and Rotterdam International. Public collections include The Museum of Modern Art, New York (US), The Rubell Family Collection, Miami (US), Whitney Museum of American Art (US), De Haallen (NL), Castello di Rivoli, Turin (IT), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen (DK), and FRAC Auvergne (FR)
In 2019, Forma supported Cécile B. Evans’ film A Screen Test for an Adaptation of Giselle, followed by ongoing conversations around how to develop the work. In 2020, the work was further expanded into an immersive sculpture as part of Frieze Live titled dress rehearsal for Notations for an Adaption of Giselle (welcome to whatever forever) presented by Chateau Shatto and Emanuel Layr.
Gaia Di Lorenzo
Gaia Di Lorenzo is an artist and researcher based in Rome.
Her research revolves around collective behaviours and their role in self-identification processes. She works on the complexity of images and weaves levels of meaning by modulating different techniques and incorporating sources from a number of contexts. Her subjects are gathered in equal measure from social network imagery, antiques and peers’ artworks. Conceived as articulated and potentially misleading representations, her works demonstrate the impossibility of a synthesis and understanding of existing events and structures. Each work should be read as the product of a sedimentation of ideas, stories, references that do not summarize existence but rather recount its contradictions. In this respect, the variety of techniques employed such as casting, engraving and drawing, formally builds and conceptually expresses different levels of meaning.
Gaia holds a BA in Literature and Philosophy from the University of Tor Vergata and a BFA from Goldsmiths University of London. She attended numerous workshops and masterclasses with tutors such as Monster Chetwynd, Michelangelo Pistoletto, John Stezaker, Enrico David, Bart van der Heide, Bik Van der Pol, Kobe Matthys, Annette Krauss, Janna Graham and Valeria Graziano. In 2019 she was selected for the Q-Rated Program of the Quadriennale.
Among her exhibitions: in 2022 ITALICS, Monopoli curated by Vincenzo De Bellis; Persona, ADA, Rome; in 2021 MATERIA NOVA curated by Massimo Mininni at the Gallery of Modern Art in Rome; Temmatemenetè, Una Boccata d'Arte, Puglia curated by Bruno Barsanti, Elpis Foundation and Galleria Continua; in 2019 We Contain Each Other (Breve storia di una spugna), ADA, Rome; in 2018 Sitting Amongst, with Pietro Librizzi at Jupiter Woods, London; in 2017 An Entertainment in Conversation and Verse, curated by Maria Adele Del Vecchio, Galleria Tiziana Di Caro, Naples and in 2016 Goldsmiths Degree Show, London.
Her works are part of numerous private collections and the installation Temmatemeneté produced for Boccata d'Arte was acquired by the Puglia Region and will remain permanently in the village.
She has been a visiting tutor at the Academy of Fine Arts of Rome and Milan. She is the representative of the Minister for Culture on the Board of Directors of the Michetti Foundation. She was invited by the Norwegian Embassy to represent Italy in Coast Contemporary, by the British Council as a member of the Committee for the UK-ITALY 2020 Cultural Season.
In 2018 Gaia founded CASTRO, an experimental learning program based in Rome. CASTRO’s programming is articulated on 3 independent tracks: one hosts a range of cultural events for and with everyone, the second provides development opportunities and workspace to artists and researchers and the third runs learning activities for students.
The CASTRO Public Program consists of a set of free activities open to the public. Amongst them are: CRITS, artist talks, screenings and seminars. In autumn 2023 CASTRO opens to the public a library on alternative education in the arts. The collection of texts was built collectively thanks to the contributions from international artists and researchers of the topic.
The CASTRO Studio Program is an educational program which hosts artists and researchers selected via open call by an international selection panel which changes every year, offering workspace and activities tailored to their practice.
Amongst the activities are: tutorials, group tutorials, studio visits, guided tours of Rome based on each research, workshops with local artisans and open studios.
The Academia Program offers bookable group and individual training courses both in person and remotely. Activities such as individual meetings to review portfolios and applications, mentoring courses via email and seminars. CASTRO often hosts the program in collaboration with local institutions such the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, MACRO Museum and AWI, ArtWorkersItalia.
Gaia is a founding member of ART WORKERS ITALIA, an autonomous and non-partisan association, created with the aim of giving voice to contemporary art workers in Italy. Conceived out of the political imagination of a group of workers in 2020 as an informal movement, today AWI is an association that collaborates with experts in the legal, fiscal, and administrative sectors, with research institutes and universities, with art and cultural institutions, to build ethical, contractual, and legal tools to protect art workers.
Both activities, that for CASTRO and that for AWI, parallel to his artistic practice reflect her interest in collective dynamics and the role of the artist in contemporary society.
Gaia Di Lorenzo was artist-in-residency at FormaHQ in 2021 and organised a series of events. We look forward to welcoming her back for a second residency in December 2023.
Himali Singh Soin Himali Singh Soin is a writer and artist based between London and Delhi. She uses metaphors from outer space and the natural environment to construct imaginary cosmologies of interferences, entanglements, deep voids, debris, delays, alienation, distance and intimacy. In doing this, she thinks through ecological loss, and the loss of home, seeking shelter somewhere in the radicality of love.
Selected recent exhibitions and events include Static Range at The Art Institute of Chicago; Body of Light at Serpentine Park Nights, London; The Third Pole at Museo Thyssen; Namak Nazar at DesertX; and Dear Earth at Hayward Gallery; Actions for the Earth at ICI Touring, 4.5 Billion Years at Brief Histories and Everybody Talks about the Weather at Foundation Prada at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
Forma first collaborated with Himali Singh Soin on the film commission we are opposite like that for the Frieze Artist Award 2019. Ever since, we published the book and vinyl of the series and hosted the live performance, accompanied by David Soin Tapeser and the Ice Quartet. Since 2022, Himali Singh Soin has been Trustee on the Forma Board. Jameisha Prescod Jameisha Prescod FRSA is an artist-filmmaker, producer and writer from South London. They specialise in integrating documentary storytelling, experimental film, and emerging technology. Much of their work examines themes of race, illness, medicine and identity while using a poetic thread to weave all elements together.
Their most recent project, "On Black Pain" tells intimate stories of three Black people living with chronic pain while reflecting on the colonial past of modern medicine. The film has been screened globally, including Aesthetical Film Festival (UK), Cultura Inglesa (Brazil) and Body On & On (China).
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Images:
Lead image: Artist / Curator Joseph Cutts in residence at FormaHQ, 2023.
Painting on glass, jesmonite, d. 120 x 9cm - 'Riesco a leggere solo l'estate', Gaia Di Lorenzo (2022). Courtesy of ADA, Rome. Image credit: Roberto APA
Discarded e-waste - 'Traces of a Cathode', Joseph Cutts, S1 Artspace (2023). Image credit: James Clarkson