About
Emma Bolland is a transdisciplinary artist and writer who both produces discreet works in different modes of working, but who also often brings both writing and material processes as separate yet parallel methods to their projects. Their current material processes focus on the intersections of painting, drawing, and assemblage. They are committed to sustainability in practice in two ways. First in foregrounding ecologically viable painting and the use of found and retrieved materials, and second, in the sense of sustainability: what kinds of work can a disabled artist make in regard to their own physical conditions without the economic privileges of having assistants or technical support? How do they create / insist on autonomy, both as a practitioner and as a body in a cultural/artistic community? They bring performance, collaboration, and events to their projects and have previously worked with video and sculptural installation. Their writing practice is hybrid: an inter-genre approach that spans poetry, fiction, essay, scripts, screenwriting, and critical and art-writing. They are interested in the problematics and ambiguities of an expanded understanding of translation—between languages and language codes, and between voice, ear, and page. They are a co-editor (with Rachel Smith) of intergraphia, the co-editor (with Judit Bodor and Tom Rodgers) of Gordian Projects, and are on the advisory board of the Intellect journal JAWS: Journal of Arts Writing. They are an Associate Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University (MFA and BA Fine Art) and a tutor for the Poetry School’s International Programme. Their practice-based PhD, Scripting Silence: The Expanded Screenplay as Present-Traumatic Language, proposed a new concept, the ‘present-traumatic’, employing artists’ language practices to resist the pathologisation of speech in relation to psychiatry and neuro-diversity.
For publications and current projects visit their respective pages. To contact, click here. See their Linktree for social media and other links.
Website construction by Lyndon Watkinson.
Photography courtesy of Rachel Smith, Brian Lewis, and others.