During lockdown in 2020, I participated in a collaborative postal project, with The Bruton Correspondence School, in Somerset, UK. The work of over 350 artists who re-made each other’s work, is on show at Bruton Museum, until 25th September.
I’m very happy to hear that my ink drawing has been long listed for the Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Prize, and will be part of an online exhibition hosted by London gallery Piano Nobile and Artsy, selected by a panel including Will Gompertz and Victoria Miro. The letter of confirmation was particularly satisfying to receive:
“From over 2000 entries your work has been identified as an outstanding contribution to the self-portrait genre and longlisted. With so many outstanding works submitted to the 2021 prize this is a huge achievement.”
The exhibitions opens on 14th May, here
I was very privileged to be invited to join a panel discussion on embodiment as a film practitioner, and how this has been affected by the Covid pandemic, at the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies conference on 8th April, with fellow panellists Lindiwe Dovey, Leena Manimekalai and Hanan Razek.
Watch the recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODJh0g5SxLU
My animated self-portrait has been selected by Animateka Festival, in Ljubljana Slovenia as part of their augmented reality showcase for female animators’ work. It can be viewed on the festival website here, using the free Eyejack app.
Ellie Land and I were invited to curate and host a panel discussion on animated documentary as part of Animate Projects‘ Accelerate programme of online events during lockdown restrictions, funded by Arts Council England and in partnership with British Council Film, in November 2020.
We were joined by film-makers Signe Baumane, Mary Martins and John Summerson, who generously shared with us their thoughts about using their own life stories in their work.
You can watch the recording of our conversation, from here on Vimeo.
I was invited to make an award for the 2020 BAA ceremony, presented by host Miles Jupp to Megan Earls for Best Student Film, for her animated documentary Border/ Line, which tells the story of Northern Irish women who have made the journey to England for an abortion.
The first exhibition of a selection of my ink self-portraits, is now open at the Butcher’s Hook, Southampton.
Nine works are on show, all prints available for sale either framed (from £95) or unframed (from £65). Please contact me hello@alysscotthawkins.co.uk for more details.
7 Manor Farm Road
Bitterne Park
Southampton
SO18 1 NN
I’ve written about the the process of making Hysteria for the academic journal Animation Practice, Process & Production and I’m thrilled that an image from the film has been chosen for the volume’s front cover.
Hysteria: An autoethnographic reflection on making an animated documentary film from archive material
Abstract:
This paper investigates the process of collection, interpretation and modification in the making of an experimental animated documentary film. In 2001, I made a two-minute film, Hysteria, as a first year project on the master’s animation course at the Royal College of Art. Given as a starting point the word ‘bedlam’, I researched the history of mental healthcare and discovered documentation of medical practices in the late 1800s of clitoridectomy and genital massage as a ‘cure’ for the condition of hysteria.
Making the film was a singular, insular journey – a stream-of-consciousness voyage of discovery: uncovering and collating material and then interpreting it through visual experimentation. Key to my process was use of a sketchbook that became a space for montage: juxtaposing material from contemporary sources against archive documents and incorporating research material into my visual experiments.
Using autoethnographic writing, I return to the state of mind that produced this film – asking how and why it came to exist – and through audio reflection I re-read the sketchbook to analyse the processes of drawing, annotating and editing which produced it. In doing so, I attempt to understand the intuitive process of interpretation, and to draw out insights which can inform my future practice.
The Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Prize exhibition opened on 24th May, at an absolutely packed Piano Nobile Gallery at King’s Place, London. My ink drawing ‘Ready for a Change Now’ was long listed from over 1000 entries. Ruth Borchard was a writer who came to the UK as a Jewish refugee from Germany in 1938. She collected 100 self-portraits by British artists, and the biennial prize celebrates her collection.
Sadly didn’t win the £10K prize this time, but it was fantastic to be there for the opening, and see my work exhibited alongside Eileen Cooper, Julian Opie …and Tracey Emin in the crowd too!
Very happy to say that I’ll be presenting work-in-progress on new animated documentary film ‘CFFH’ at the Society for Animation Studies annual conference from 17-21 June 2019.
This project returns to material produced in development of a film 20 years ago, examining the archive of sketchbooks, scripts and artwork which articulate the experience of losing my dad to alcoholism. For the first time I will be using autoethnography consciously within the film-making process (rather than as a tool for reflection on previous work), as a means by which the ‘me now’ can interact with the ‘me then’.
Details of the conference can be found here: http://sas2019.ulusofona.pt
Alys Scott-Hawkins 