The Winter Open Studios 2023 took place from 9 to 11 March, featuring the studios of the artists in residence.

The artists presented some of their work to answer visitors’ questions and share their research: Maeve Brennan – Sainsbury Scholar, Luke Burton – Abbey Fellow in Painting, Hardeep Dhindsa – Leverhulme Study Abroad Scholarship, Catriona Gallagher – Bridget Riley Fellow, Holly Graham – Sainsbury Scholar, Sharon Kelly – Arts Council of Northern Ireland Fellow, Lucy Tarquinio – Abbey Scholar in Painting, Laura White – Ampersand Fellow 2022-23.

For more information on the artists, click here.

The Winter Open Studios have been an opportunity to highlight some aspects of the research that underpins the artists’ work, including reflection on Rome and its connection to food; the urgency to re-visualise our relationships with plants and the ‘beyond’ world; painting as a narrative device; the usage of colour to critique the myth of Whiteness in classical sculpture; creativity as a support for the processing of personal or collective trauma; forms of repair and reparative histories; the malleability of memory and the subjective nature of collective experience; and visual research into the connection between Mannerism and Cosmatesque mosaics.

The event represented a different way of experiencing research in progress, that aimed to give the audience a broader insight into the artists’ work, to discover their residency projects, their creative practices and, most importantly, to understand how a new environment, meetings and network with the local artistic community, can give rise to new experimentations.