Public Sphere
Nina Coulson
In 2010 I opened MOVEMENT, an artist-led gallery on Platform 2 of Worcester Foregate Street Railway Station, which is currently being used during the COVID crisis by train crew as a site for social distancing during breaks. I am working on ways to directly engage artists/artworks with the essential workers using the space during this time
At the RCA, my initial work investigated post-collaborative practice, involved muddy online group collaborations, art writing and performance and enacted forms of conflict resolution through performatly activated sculpture. In the middle of my MA, I took a two year leave of absense, during which time, amongst other things, I was commissioned by Inifinite Multiple to produce a harvest of Four Leaf Clovers for them to distribute and represented by Fanguito Studio, Havana, Cuba, where I showed part of an ongoing series of drawings and paintings at the Havana Biennial (2019) and continued working on MOVEMENT projects.
I returned to the RCA complete my studies in January 2020, focusing on THE PIER, an ongoing body of research and development producing a sister space for MOVEMENT, an artist-led roadside refectory for London in a disused Cabmans Shelter on the Chelsea Embankment. Following negotiations with The Cabman's Shelter Fund, I am now key holder and am leading the fundraising, renovation and future re-enstatement of THE PIER, (one of Londons 13 Cabmans shelters) into an artist-led roadside refectory.
I am currently recipitant of an Elmley Foundaton award which has enabled me to complete my studies at the Royal College of Art and also an Arts Council England COVID 19 Emergency Award, enabling me to produce work in response to the COVID crisis.
Selected (recent) Exhibitions
2020
Non Playable Character 0.2, Center for Visual Arts, Havana, Cuba ( postponed due to COVID 19)
2019
Small Scrawls, K6 Gallery. Southampton.
Non Playable Character, Fanguito Studio. Havana Biennial, Cuba.
2018
Cooked and Raw: RCA at Liverpool Independents Biennial. UK
The Lucid Dreamcatcher feat Katya Kan, Chelsea Arts Club London. UK
Rumination’s of a midnight stroll, Harlesden Highstreet London. UK
Lounge Arrival, Infinite Multiple, Arebyte. London UK
States of Public, Fact (Offsite Project). Liverpool. UK
Embracing the Underdog Q Park, Chinatown London. UK
2017
Pre-sliced Orange Slices, Light Eye Mind. London. UK
Midnight Cinema, Harlesden Highstreet. London. UK
2016
ArtistsCompute, Office for Art, Design and Technology. Coventry. UK
MII friends, collaboration with artist Ed Fornieles.UK/ Canada
My Practice involves varied collaborations, investigating the politics of art production in the public and private realms, most recently involving post-participatory and meta participation methods, painting and drawing.
I move between mediums and formats and often my work involves a re-appropriation of a found or harvested object or image. Often context specific, artworks involve distribution, re-appropriation of everyday objects, problem solving and sharing.
Medium:
audio fileSize:
12 minutes
WHAT IS THE PIER?
WHAT WILL THE PIER DO?
HOW CAN ARTIST-LED PROJECTS BE SELF-SUSTAINING?
WHAT ARE THE CURATORIAL CONCERNS?
THE WORK OF ART IS THE NEGOTIATION?
I'M LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO GET INVOLVED
Currently twelve Cabmen’s Shelters are operational as canteens, providing affordable meals and social space to London’s Hackney Carriage drivers. Built to a limited scale (no bigger than a horse and cart: 530 wide, 203 cm deep.) The shelters serve affordable hot meals and drinks to to around 23,000 cabbies via a compact kitchen and horseshoe dining area (seats 8 people). Due to the shelters limited scale, only cabbies (and occasional invited members of the public) are allowed inside. A counter service is provided to the general public through a hatch.
My main body of work at the RCA has been the research and development of the empty Cabman's Shelter on Chelsea Embankment into an artist led-roadside refectory that will once more serve cabbies
and the public/s
THE PIER has been closed for over a decade and I am now the keyholder and fundraising /developing the project.
The project is ongoing and I would like to hear from people who want to be involved and who can offer skills towards making this happen (there's a lot of work to do!). Please email me for more information . To support the project follow the link to the crowdfunder:
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/artist-led-renovation-of-a-cabmans-shelter-london
Medium:
oil on canvasSize:
ongoing
Try growing white clover from seed or runner
Go out into the garden in the rain, pick a few. Put them in a book to dry.
Shake out books on bookshelf to see how many you can find again. Bag them up.
Find more, put them in another book.
Practice this daily.
Bag up
Distribute
Distribute
In this climate of grinding austerity, when truth is manipulated and instability is the norm, the I suggest that it is vital that people find ways of summoning collective strength and fortune. By sharing my repeated, everyday nurturing, picking and processing of this special harvest, as talismanic multiples, a symbol of strength, I hope through their dispersal to share fortune with those that need it.
Fortis Fortuna Adiuvat have recently been distributed from the Public Sphere studio at the Royal College of Ar, more are being distributed as mail art and through coordination with For The Love of Scrubs group on Facebook and the train operating company West Midland Railway, several thousand will be gifted to local healthcare and railway workers to offer hope during the Covid 19 crisis.
In the same way that AI facial recognition software advances its understanding of a particular subject/object through the studied repetition of similar tagged visual elements, I have, through ongoing collection of a rare mythical / mutant organic object, developed an enhanced ability for pattern recognition. On the macro-level this extra sensory perception is used to seek out unused, small-scale networked infastructural buildings that are otherwise overlooked, ignored and long disused.such as THE PIER and MOVEMENT.
Click on my shopify link in my about section to purchase a four leaf clover and support this long term project!
https://rca-sales.com/collections/vendors?q=nina.coulson@network.rca.ac.uk
Medium:
organic four-leaf clovers, zip bag, hand written labelSize:
variable/ongoing
reaching out
call center
group chat
can you feel it
team work
group text
next generation
routine service
Medium:
felt pen on paperSize:
a5/a4
social distancing /cell tower — oil on canvas 18 x 24 cm 2020
social distancing /drone — oil on canvas 18 x 24 cm 2020
VR Girls Night Out — Oil on Canvas 7 x 9 cm 2017
Carebot 0.2 — Oil on Canvas 2019
Google Maps Pin — Oil on Canvas 18 x 24 cm 2019
Woman Marries Robot — Oil on canvas 18 x 24 cm 2018
Mother and Child — Oil on canvas 7 x 9 cm 2018
Mother and Child 0.2 — Oil on canvas 7 x 9 cm 2018
Carebot 0.3 — Watercolour on A4 paper 2018
Finger Painted Facebook Interface — Oil on Canvas 2016
Self Portrait as a Virus Protected Smartphone (home gallery during lockdown) — Oil on canvas 2020
Carebot 0.1 — Oil on Canvas 2019
Stock or news images are harvested from the Internet with a smartphone, reproduced as paintings, documented and then redistributed online, to be viewed again through a screen.
To paint is to delight in texture and touch, to experience first hand what cannot be experienced through a screen.