Małgorzata Dawidek, a Polish-born artist, writer, and art historian, held a month-long research and development residency at Highgreen in August 2018. She had studied Painting and Art Criticism at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan, Poland, and earned a PhD in Art History from the Institute of Art History at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. Since 2015, Malgorzata has undertaken research at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. Her artistic practice is closely connected to her own bodily condition, exploring how physical experience, limitations, and perception shape creative expression.

During her residency, Małgorzata developed a series of lone performances in which she used her body to respond to the features and qualities of the rural landscape. These works explored the interaction between her condition, notions of pain, and the experience of the ill or impaired body in physical and emotional terms. Each performance acted as a form of bodily language, expressing the relationship between her internal state and the surrounding environment. The performances were documented through photography and video, providing a record of both action and place.

Previously, Małgorzata had primarily created her performance work in urban, indoor spaces such as galleries and studios. The Highgreen residency offered the opportunity to transfer her practice to remote rural locations, allowing her to investigate how her body could engage with open landscapes, uneven terrain, and natural elements. This change of setting provided new insights into the relationship between physicality, space, and artistic expression.

At the conclusion of her residency, Małgorzata held a one-day exhibition in which she displayed the photographic and video documentation of her performances. This presentation offered audiences a sense of the artist’s process and the way her work mediated between body, location, and lived experience.

Małgorzata’s residency was a pilot programme specifically advertised to artists who self-identified as disabled. The initiative was informed by collaboration with disabled curator, artist, advocate, and consultant Aidan Moesby, who advised VARC throughout the residency. The experience provided valuable learning for VARC in supporting more diverse and disabled artists in future programmes, demonstrating the potential of rural residencies to accommodate a range of artistic practices and abilities.

Through her work at Highgreen, Małgorzata Dawidek combined physical exploration, personal experience, and engagement with the rural landscape to create performance-based artworks that interrogated the body, place, and vulnerability in striking and thoughtful ways.