2000 My Favourite Painting

25 September - 22 November 2000

Public Art Project

Royal Holloway and Bedford College University of London, London, United Kingdom

 

This project was produced as part of an international residency programme at Royal Holloway and Bedford College, University of London. The programme was part of a visual arts scheme accompanying the opening of an International Building at the college to serve as a centre for study of modern languages including English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish.

For my project at Royal Holloway I drew on the history of the college, founded by Thomas Holloway, and gained inspiration from its collection of Victorian paintings to create my artwork. In order to encourage interaction between the people in the region, the college people and the collection, I organised a series of workshops on the paintings with pupils from Magna Carta School, a local secondary school, as well as students and staff from the college.

The workshop participants were invited to the Picture Gallery at Royal Holloway, where they wrote down their impressions of the Victorian painting collection. Multilingual versions of the resulting texts were produced and exhibited as works accompanied by captions on various walls of the International Building.