Bridget Kennedy spent one month based at Heritage Centre Bellingham in July 2021. Below you can find out more about Bridget’s practice, initial plans, and her experience whilst undertaking the residency.
A consideration of timescales, so evident in the shaping of the land through geology, weather and decades of human endeavour permeates my creative process. This takes me into areas such as archaeology, ecology and geology. I use installation, sculpture, photography and video as tools with which to investigate my subject matter. The objects that I make combine traditional craft-based, hand making methods with Fine Art techniques and a DIY approach to construction. Each work is individually tailored to a site or a specific set of circumstances, so I am constantly expanding the range of materials and processes that I use.
Over the past four years I have been working with the process of weaving, through making my own looms, taking the looms into the landscape and incorporating materials from these places into the weavings. I do not consider myself to be a weaver or a crafts person as such, but I look upon weaving as a metaphor both for the creative thought process and for our relationship with the animal, mineral and plant based life around us. Coming from an exploration of mutual obligation and interdependence I am interested in how particular methods of making have arisen out of specific places. How do local resources arising from the geology or ecology of a place influence the way people relate to the world?