I recently returned from the London Summer Intensive residency program at the Slade School of Art in cooperation with the Camden Arts Centre. This residency invited 24 artists to come make art at the Slade Woburn Square Studios for a four-week long intensive program. I met artists from all over the world, including another South African artist Joe Turpin. The program included a lot of networking with one-on-one sessions with local artists and curators, including Raju Rage, Andy Wicks and Matthew Krishanu. The residency is led by Jefford Horrigan, a funny and intelligent artist and London-enthusiast. He and his team of artists took us on tours along the Thames and gave intricate history lessons, as well as showed us some of the best pubs in London.

During the residency we were also taken on tours of London galleries, which included crit sessions with the curators at the Camden Arts Centre. A part of the residency included a work in progress exhibition at the Camden Arts Centre as well as a final exhibition at the Slade School of Arts. At the work-in-progress show I presented three hanging paper sculptures, assembled from different handmade papers I found at a local shop, with drawings I made of people from London. These were later combined and added to, to great one ghostly cloud-like shape. This was exhibited at the Slade School of Art Woburn Studios for the final open studios.

My means of drawing-collection included walks in local parks and public transportation, where I drew only faces. The diversity of London was very enriching, and I found myself drawing wildly differing people. This process made living in London, a place known for its lack of eye contact and interactions despite the proximity of people, quite intimate and rich. Looking and drawing strangers makes us really notice what is going on around us – a useful tool for someone trying to take in as much as they possibly can – but can have a violent side too.

Looking and drawing – taking a face (often without the participant’s awareness of what is happening) suddenly became a harsh endeavour. Redrawing them always changed the faces slightly – it changed the identity of the participant and made them into something else (do I create identity crises?). The final artwork also made me focus on the violent aspects of my process, and the way the off-white paper blowing in the wind became skeletal and quite eerie. The work in the end was gruesome when looked at in that way – something highlighted to me first by the curators at Camden. Thinking about my process as violent gave me a new perspective on my work and how it could be interpreted.

The uplifting aspect of the drawing process compared to the violence made for an interesting juxtaposition, while the addition of wind and movement laid focus on the thread. Thread has been a permanent fixture of my process, and having it become more of a feature and less of a practical necessity has also placed a focus on the way that it has become an extension of my line.

This residency has also been a motivation for me to start investing in paper and really looking at the type of pages I include in an artwork. Each sheet has a history – some made by hand, others by machines, each originating from plant life. My artwork also included a found object plant that I discovered on one of my walks, underneath a sign that said “Free Plants.” I made a small paper installation around the plant, and so the paper could return to its roots, while also pulling a random garden object into the gallery space.

Despite all these new avenues opened to me during this last month, I have many more questions than answers about the future of my work and where it will go. I feel energised to take on the next few months and really digest everything that has opened to me since the start of my time at the Slade School.