Contact:
Bryony_kate_gillard(at)hotmail(dot)co(dot)uk
About:
Bryony Gillard (she/they) is an artist, curator and educator and is currently a PhD Candidate at the School Art, Architecture and Design at University of Plymouth. She is co-director of Perennial an artist-led space in Bristol, U.K.
Situated between writing, workshops, performance, moving image and exhibition making, her practice reflects on events, states of being, materials and organisms that refuse or resist normative capitalist structures and temporalities. These can include thinking about grief, sickness or erotic autonomy, engaging with materials such as sewage, seaweed or auto-fiction and working with genealogies of feminist labour that are elusive, messy and entangled in contemporary concerns.
Her current research centres the politics of waste — as matter both in and out of place. Through the lens of queer, crip, anti-colonial and post human feminist thinking/being, she is attempting to explore waste as a metaphor, material and methodology. Recent projects include a solo exhibition at Jerwood Arts (London, 2021), a commission with the University of Bristol (2022) and a new performance for Playbill (Amsterdam, 2023).
Her work has been commissioned and presented on a variety of national and international platforms including ESTUARY (Kent), Holden Gallery (Manchester), Cinema Maison at BB15 (Linz), Ocean Archive Programme at TBA21 Academy (Venice), Tate St.Ives Cornwall, Arnolfini (Bristol), The Royal Albert Memorial Museum (Exeter), FLATLAND Projects (Hastings) and Turf Projects (Croydon). She has an MFA from the Dutch Art Institute, School for Art Praxis and is an Lecturer in MA Fine Art at University of Gloucestershire and BA Fine Art at University of the West of England.
My pronouns are she/her/hers.
Education:
PhD Candidate at the School Art, Architecture and Design at University of Plymouth 2024-2027
Master Fine Art Praxis, Dutch Art Institute 2013-15
First Class Hons BA Fine Art Degree, University of East London, 2003-2006
Foundation Diploma in Fine Art (Distinction) University College Falmouth, 2002-2003
Awards:
2020: Arts Council England: Project Grant
2020: Arts Council England: Emergency funding (distributed through a solidarity syndicate)
2019: Winner of RAMM south west artist commission
2019: Grant awarded from The Elephant Trust
2019: A-N Professional Development Bursary
2017: Arts Council England: Grants for the Arts Award
2017: FEAST Cornwall Award
2017: Peninsula Arts Film Award
2015: Gane Trust supported artist
2015: Schurman Schimmel van Outeren award
2013: Southwest Showcase, PCA: solo exhibition
2011: Plymouth Visual Arts Consortium, Artist Associate for PCA
2009: Spacex Young Curator award.
Residencies:
2019: (Autumn) Hospitalfeld, Arbroath, Scotland
2017: Createaah, Carmarthenshire, Wales
2017: Glasshouse, New Art Gallery Walsall, Birmingham
2015: Molecular Revolutions, Casa de Povo (DAI), Sao Paulo, Brazil
2015: Tate Artist Programme
2014: Redefining Print, Double Elephant Print Workshop
2013: Curfew Tower, Cushendal, N.Ireland
2011: Glovebox, Bristol
2010: Escalator Retreat Wysing Art Centre (facilitating artist)
2010: Social Sculpture, Transition, The Exchange
Curatorial Roles:
2019: Assistant Curator (freelance) Spike Island
2017-ongoing: Co-director, Perennial, Bristol
2015-16: Associate Curator, Arnolfini, Bristol UK
2013-14: Detroit, Bristol - Co-Director
2012-13: Arnolfini, Exhibitions Coordinator, Bristol UK
2011: Come to Ours, Curator, Plymouth UK
2009-11: Project Space 11, Curator, Plymouth UK
2009-11: Plymouth Arts Centre, Programme Coordinator, Plymouth UK
Published texts and articles
2023: Unctuous Voices, Seaweed Kinships’, Holding Sway: Seaweeds and the Politics of Form, Ed. Melody Jue and Maya Weeks, Foundry, Humanities Research Institute, University of California
2020: Poems in Field|Guide, Boston
2019: Interview with Izzy DuBois & Phoebe Cripps, Young Artists in Conversation
2019: Interview w. Babette Mangolte (& Louis Hartnoll), MIRAJ Journal
2018: Essay in Orlando Magazine issue, Beyond the Body
2016: An Exploration of Verbivocovisual Borders & Margins, Documnt, New York
2017: Disappearing into Land, Marie Yates: Works 1971-79, Richard Saltoun Gallery
2016: Interview with Simone Forti, Artists at Work, Afterall.org
2015: Disappearing into Land (part I), The Sun Went In, the Fire Went Out, Chelsea Space
Recent lectures, teaching and talks:
2020:
Workshops with: Into the Wild (Chisenhale Studios, London), Grad jobs (Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh), EOP (Eastside Projects, Birmingham), CAMP (Plymouth), University of West of England (Bristol), Spike Island (Bristol), Bristol University
2019-ongoing: University of Gloucestershire, Associate Lecturer, MA Fine Art
2019-ongoing: UWE BA Fine Art, Associate Lecturer
2019: Artist talk, UNITe, G39, Cardiff
2019: Artist Facilitator, Hestercombe House, engagement project: Leaves Rustling, Friends Chatting, Rain Falling with Year 9's, Taunton Academy
2018: Workshop facilitator, Feminist Archive South
2018: UWE BA Graphic Design, Associate lecturer: joint module leader
2018-19: Arnolfini - Artist Facilitator (workshops & learning projects w.young people inc. 6 week residency & commission with Year 9's, Bristol Metropolitan Academy 2018
2018: Visiting lecturer, Croydon College
2018: Associate lecturer, Plymouth College of Art
2018: Jellyfish thinking, feeling, being: Writing workshops w.female/non-binary people taking place at the Hypatia Trust (Penzance), Newbridge Projects (Newcastle), The Art Institute (Plymouth), TURF projects (Croydon)
2018: Virginia Woolf: Art & Ideas conference, Tate St.Ives, panelist & presenter
2017: UWE BA Graphic Design, Associate lecturer: joint module leader
2017: EBC-Night School, facilitating artist on artist-led peer learning programme
2016: Exeter Phoenix, Redefining Print Conference
2015: ALIAS, annual conference, invited panel member
2015: Visiting Lecturer, Falmouth University
2013: Associate lecturer, Plymouth College of Art, BA Fine Art
Exhibitions:
2023:
Along Comes Tera (performance), Playbill Act VII, Torpedo Theatre, Amsterdam
We are floating in space, Newlyn Art gallery and the Exchange, Cornwall
(Screening) PROMENADE, Weston-super-mare
(Screening) Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway Dec
(Live project) There are tides in the body (with Conway & Young), Spike Island, Bristol
2022:
Moving image commission, University of Bristol, PGR Centre (Bristol)
(Screening) Repeated Apparitions, Carefuffle Collective, Horse Hospital (London)
(Screening) Birmingham Critical Film Forum
2021:
Unctuous Between Fingers presented at ESTUARY Festival (Kent/Essex) programmed by Cement Fields
Unctuous Between Fingers web platform, workshops, events and reading groups in Devon Cornwall and Kent supported by Project Grant from Arts Council England
Solo exhibition, Jerwood Solo Presentation, Jerwood Arts (alongside exhibitions by Emii Alrai and Freya Dooley)
Commission with University of Bristol Post Graduate Research Centre
2020:
Unctuous Between Fingers screenings at: The Holden Gallery (Manchester), Cinema Maison, BB15 (Linz), 41/42 Project Space (St.Ives), TBA 21 Academy Ocean Archive (Venice)
2019:
Unctuous Between Fingers, Sea Garden, RAMM, (Exeter) (November)
Harmonic Anatomies/Wet Mouths, performance, Tyneside Cinema, (Newcastle)
Unctuous Between Fingers (screening) Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender Resistance (Act III), Arnolfini (Bristol) (7 December)
Slippery Bodies, (2 person show) FLATLAND Projects (Hastings) part of the public programme for Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender Resistance (Act II) De la warr, Pavillion (Bexhill on Sea)
Bau-bo-bad, performance, A Place that Fosters Us, De Pimlico Projects (London)
A cap, like water, transparent, fluid yet with definite body (screening) SUPERNORMAL festival
2017-18:
Solo exhibitions:
A cap, like water, transparent, fluid yet with definite body:
Peninsula Arts (Plymouth), BEEF (Bristol), Turf Projects (Croydon)
Group Exhibitions:
The Atlantic Project, Plymouth (pilot for a new international festival of contemporary art) Virginia Woolf, An Exhibition inspired by her writings, Tate St.Ives (touring to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge & Pallant House, Chichester)
Screenings:
A cap, like water...(2018) has been screened at the following events:
Wild Pop, Newbridge Projects, Newcastle
Edge Effects: Artists and Animals on the Margins, Art Licks Weekend, London Jamboree, Dartington, Devon
Hypatia Trust, Cornwall
2016:
The Stones Talk to Me, Public commission, Fungus Press, TURF, London.
WORDCHORDS, Docmnt, New York
2015:
Molecular Revolutions, Casa de Pova, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
C~C, Tate St Ives.
Surface/ Contact, Exeter Phoenix.
2014:
To Make a Work, Upominki, Rotterdam.
An Eye, An Arch A Bridge, DAI, Arnhem, NL.
Waking Up a Shape, Woodside Press, Bristol Art Weekender.
When Two or More Come Together, SWG3, Glasgow.
2013:
In the Boom of the Tingling Strings, Solo, South West Showcase, Plymouth.
Bobby’s Recital, 2 person exhibition (w. Jenny Moore), Standpoint Gallery, London.