Set out by William the Conqueror the New Forest has a rich history, a unique ecology, and longstanding communities who live on, use and identify with the forest. This one-week collaborative project and dynamic exhibition is to be developed around your personal research into an aspect of the New Forest. Students can work in collaboration, focussing on a part of the New Forest’s history, topography, flora, and fauna, communities, or narrative. There are witches, enclosures, past economies, amateur groups working, a crawling bishop, hidden messaging and more as soon as you scratch below the surface. The exhibition is a project-based show, continually evolving over the week. Collaboration is between materials, each other, and the curated space. Materials are consciously limited to mainly paper.

Paper, Rock, Scissors sets out three possible starting points to question the New Forest: a material which has rich qualities, the idea of landscape or processes and human interventions. Like the game the title is derived from, these three gestures interact with each other and form an interconnected dialogue across its elements.

The residency is based out of SPUD’s gallery in Sway. SPUD is an art and design hub sited in the middle of the New Forest. It has artists’ studios, incubator spaces, runs workshops, develops collaborations, residencies and has a gallery. https://www.spud.org.uk/

Duration – one week

Aim – to foster open experimentation and creative dialogue. To build professional relations between artists and arts organisations.

Outcomes – building a professional portfolio through exhibition, develop a collaborative body of work through cooperation and dialogue and making connections within the arts community.