Anna Curtz Price

portrait of a boat and delight in the egglike world 

earth paintings of 3 garden sculptures

brockwell park + tower block 

communal garden against backdrop of urban landscape (white) 

canal side - vessels channeling electricity, boats and plant life 

experiments with earth painting 

playing card sized Thames surfaces 

Oil triptych from A Level 

oil painting based off visit to Venice 

watery bodies - vessels, veins and dissolving into the sea

I studied an archive held at the UL of student protests and the Our Streets survey responses. I was struck by the photographs inside cardboard boxes, the traces of stories they revealed, the random details which were not central to the intention of the original recording. Archives are a way of claiming and reimagining space. From found material I made temporary interventions in the built environment in unremarkable places which were typical of the survey responses I found most interesting. I then recorded and memorialised these to highlight how they offered alternative perspectives on the environments I had placed them within. I took these photographic records and transformed them into more personal responses. Finally, I returned my responses to the locations which they originated from. Through this process of translation between the recorded and the real, which blurs the boundary between different spaces and different people’s narratives and memories I sought to demonstrate how archives can be used like building materials in playful and creative ways to rework space. I thought cardboard and the cardboard box provide an interesting link between the materiality of the archives (boxes in which they are stored) and the materials which tend to be used in order to reconfigure space (cardboard protest signs or dens made by children or shelters made by the homeless). I was inspired by hearing about a group of lesbian squatters in the 1970s in Hackney whose direct physical engagement with the built environment through the reclaiming of abandoned terraced houses, allowed them to create alternative worlds for themselves. Nevertheless, no material trace of their presence remains in the neighbourhood today.  

Circular mirrors and the steam. Gazing at oneself did not feel like vanity - it felt like a celebration of physicality - an embrace of whatever it is that you inhabit. A giving up to the body.