ALMOST £10,000 has been awarded to up-and-coming artists on our doorstep who are ready to make their mark on the world.
A record total of £9,741 has been granted to the 15 budding artists in a bid to help with their professional career development.
The 2021 Firstsite Collectors’ Group Bursary Awards scheme will fund photographers, a cartoonist, a poet, plus several visual artists working in different formats, including digital, video and sculpture.
One of the beneficiaries is artist and environmental activist Jane Stewart, who is researching the forgotten women of the Essex coast.
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Looking closely at the The Fishwives or Herring Girls, Jane says the term fishwife has taken on negative connotations, denoting a loud, course and brash woman.
She said: “I want to use my work to redress this version of toxic femininity, to take back the word and give these hardworking, feisty women a more positive place in history for the work they did, on many occasions in very bad conditions and for long hours.
“I am hoping the culmination of the work will involve an installation, using the skills I will have learned to create a large fishwife sculpture, hopefully on the beach or a sandbar at Brightlingsea, that will eventually be destroyed by the tidal ebb and flow.”
Tom Armstrong, who contributes to Private Eye under the initials T.E.A, is a cartoonist with an interest in the satirical and the surreal.
With his award, he plans to produce and publish a collection of his work, using the money to pay for professional design consultation and to partly fund the initial printing costs.
He explained: “The book would bring about some sort of closure to the last few years’ work, allowing for reflection upon the many cartoons I have produced and providing a point from which to move forward. It would also make my mum proud.”
Firstsite director Sally Shaw said: “It’s exciting to see these awards support such a wide range of diverse local artists to grow and develop their careers and practise.
“A key aim of Firstsite is to actively listen to our community and empower everyone to be creative together.”
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