Bridget Kennedy will spend one month based at Heritage Centre Bellingham in summer 2021. For now read a little more about her practice and her initial plans.

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?

ENTWINED: Rural. Land. Lives. Art.

I was selected for the one month residency at Bellingham Heritage Centre, which will take place in July 2021. Using the Heritage Centre’s display of artefacts as a starting point I would explore how humans have interacted with the landscape of Northumberland throughout history. Focussing on the design, manufacture and use of tools and how these tools facilitated the transformation of raw materials into useable products like food, clothing and shelter.

My primary partnership would be with the Bellingham Heritage Centre, but I would also like to connect with the Northumberland National Park and the Northumberland Wildlife Trust in order to co-ordinate walks and field trips in the surrounding countryside.

Biography

Bridget Kennedy is a visual artist living in the South West corner of Northumberland, close to the border with County Durham and Cumbria. She is also a part time lecturer in the Fine Art department at Newcastle University, a cultural assistant at Killhope Lead Mining Museum and is about to enter the second year of a part time practice-based PhD in the Fine Art department of Goldsmiths University. She has worked with Northumberland National Park through her involvement in the Triparks residency. This resulted in a publication and an exhibition of works that toured three national parks. She has worked with VARC through the special projects fund, this resulted in the work Black Middens that was exhibited at VARC and later at The Bellingham Heritage Centre. She has also worked regularly with ACA, Allenheads, running creative workshops and producing works for exhibition. Between 2014 -18 she was part of the Power in The Land project which resulted in a touring exhibition of artworks, an archive exhibition and a bilingual publication.