https://emmabolland.net Emma Bolland Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:32:02 +0000 https://emmabolland.net en https://emmabolland.net/Homepage-1 Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:32:02 +0000 Emma Bolland https://emmabolland.net/Homepage-1 <img width="7087" height="4724" width_o="7087" height_o="4724" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0aab56098d1a5d0df3ab3ad176123f75e4fd66b09c94f7e75cb42e809bbd751d/_DSB4868.jpg" data-mid="247001320" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0aab56098d1a5d0df3ab3ad176123f75e4fd66b09c94f7e75cb42e809bbd751d/_DSB4868.jpg" /> EMMA BOLLAND https://emmabolland.net/About Tue, 12 Sep 2023 13:16:07 +0000 Emma Bolland https://emmabolland.net/About &nbsp;ABOUT <img width="2560" height="1600" width_o="2560" height_o="1600" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2e92a6c395d055cba398cb3caa6ba87426b2ff330a152c9cb8277e3be7c44bf4/Screenshot-2026-04-09-at-18.48.58.png" data-mid="247008095" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/2e92a6c395d055cba398cb3caa6ba87426b2ff330a152c9cb8277e3be7c44bf4/Screenshot-2026-04-09-at-18.48.58.png" /> I am a transdisciplinary artist and writer. I describe my work as psychonautical. I think about materiality; memory and magic; transmissions from and between materials, sites and worlds; the emotions of site-specificity; the sensory affects and afterlives of institutional architectures; distance and time. The work manifests as drawing, sculpture, sound, language, performance, and more. I ask myself, what does the work need? I approach my research and practice with speculative, sci-fi sensibilities. Drawing on diverse histories such as those of Constructivism and Suprematism, visual practices of Theosophy, astronomy, Sci-Fi film and TV, and my personal histories of institutionalisation and disability. I position abstraction as a kind of science fiction — to quote Malevich, as ‘untethered from the earth’. &nbsp;My writing is widely published, and I am the first translator of the 1920’s avant-garde film director Louis Delluc’s screenplays into English. With Rachel Smith I co-edit the interdisciplinary imprint intergraphia. I am an Associate Lecturer for the postgraduate Fine Art Programme at SHU and a tutor for The Poetry School’s international prohramme. See my&nbsp;News page for upcoming projects and events To contact, click here. See my&nbsp;Linktree for social media and events.&nbsp; Recent and Selected Exhibitions, Residencies, and Performances. Designs for Spaceships #1&nbsp;(solo showcase), Bloc Projects, 2026. It must work like a recording (fixed in the floor and the walls) (residency and exhibition with Rachel Smith and Tyler Mellins), Wath Hall, 2026.Glitch Semaphore, a sculpture-as-performance for Situation Leeds: Contemporary Artists and the Public Realm, 2026. The Public Dream (solo project), Art House UK, Wakefield, 2025. Another Way of Seeing (group exhibition), curated by Gill Crawshaw and hosted by Leeds City Art Gallery, 2025 Testing Ground (residency), Yorkshire Art Space, 2025. The Expanded Librarian (group exhibition and performance), CRASSH, University of Cambridge, 2023. Radio Silence (sound collaboration with Nastassja Simensky, Laroche, and Gesa Helms), broadcast as part of Radiophrenia’s The Light at the End of the Dial, 2023. ImPerfekt, Mewo Kunsthalle, Memmingem, Germany. Other exhibiting artists included Daniele Buetti, Adi Hösle, Nikola Irmer, Annegret Soltau, and Marc Quinn, 2021. #interrupteur Knowledge Exchange artist-writer in residence for the University of Sheffield’s School of Arts and Humanities, 2019. Sh! ffLight! an art-writing/sound poem score for two voices written and performed in collaboration with Helen Clarke, part of Writing Photographs at Tate Modern, 2018. INT/EXT (solo exhibition), Wild Pansy Project Space, University of Leeds, 2016. Micromegas Vagabond Flux, Gallerie Université de Lille 3, Lille, France. Micromegas Vagabond Flux was conceived, commissioned and curated by Tracy Mackenna and Edwin Jannsen. Other artists included Laure Prouvost, Jonn Herschend, Stefanos Pavlakis &amp; Tobias Kauer, Mick Peter, and Bik Van der Pol, 2015. The Is of the Thing (performance and film screening), part of Shady Dealings with Language curated by Roy Claire Potter and David Berridge, Matt’s Gallery, London, 2014. Wildwood (group exhibition) with Laura Ford, Racheal Goodyear, Diane Howse, Kelly McCallum, Sophie Lascelles, Heather and Ivan Morison, and Rebecca Birch), PSL, 2007. Rose and Heather (solo exhibition) at Leeds City Art Gallery, 2006. Multiples und Editionen, Con/temporary gallery, Berlin Residencies, 2006. Lightboat, Culture Company public art commission for Holbeck and the Leeds &amp; Liverpool Canal. Situation News (a collaborative intervention with John Wakeman for Situation Leeds, a festival of art in the public realm), 2005. Situation News is cited and pictured in Gabriel N. Gee, Art in the North of England 1979–2009, London: Routledge, 2017. Sylvia Sylvia (where are you buried?), (solo show) ESA, 2004. The Grammar of Display Huddersfield Art Gallery, 2002. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, (solo exhibition), Wolverhampton Art Gallery, 1988. https://emmabolland.net/Three-Building Sat, 23 Sep 2023 10:43:58 +0000 Emma Bolland https://emmabolland.net/Three-Building Three Building <img width="5547" height="4160" width_o="5547" height_o="4160" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/52c5dae89dd583d78abe377e539b387ec36c0e9fd3e4c6c8eab009c9a3aeaa38/DSCF1490a.jpg" data-mid="191627959" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/52c5dae89dd583d78abe377e539b387ec36c0e9fd3e4c6c8eab009c9a3aeaa38/DSCF1490a.jpg" /> <img width="5316" height="3987" width_o="5316" height_o="3987" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/46bae2e03828c3be0a73016e6dd68c7b840e27745ca3af2e07e85bdd8ed26ca0/DSCF1392a.jpg" data-mid="191627960" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/46bae2e03828c3be0a73016e6dd68c7b840e27745ca3af2e07e85bdd8ed26ca0/DSCF1392a.jpg" /> <img width="4574" height="3431" width_o="4574" height_o="3431" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/629d190333549be9a008a3404093723973da705510f5d1624c67b662d03cce15/DSCF1342a.jpg" data-mid="191628005" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/629d190333549be9a008a3404093723973da705510f5d1624c67b662d03cce15/DSCF1342a.jpg" /> THREE BUILDING is an ongoing cross-disciplinary project using moves across and between methods including painting, assemblage, writing, and performance. The title comes from Lara Jefferson’s These are my Sisters: an insandectomy, written during her incarceration in The Oklahoma State Asylum, I think at some time during the 1930s, and self-published in 1947, in which Jefferson pays attention to the spaces that she and the other patients had to navigate, and in which she often refers to the threat of being moved to ‘Three Building’ the section of the asylum reserved for the most ‘insane’, and about which she can only speculate. THREE BUILDING thinks about the idea of ‘total institutions’, such as psychiatric hospitals, prisons, and other sites whose ‘encompassing or total character is symbolised by the barrier to social intercourse with the outside world and to departure’. How can patients and inmates find moments and spaces in these architectures where they can collectively and individually preserve self-hood / self-determination? My material thinking through making with painting and assemblage is deliberately abstract and unfixed, using abstraction as a possibility to think beyond the burden of representation, using materials to imaging subverted architectures. My writing for this project often seeks to imagine the voice of asylum buildings, and an example of this can be found in Blackbox Manifold, Issue 29: Winter 2022. Three Building proposes memory as a forward-looking act to critique total institutions through considerations of the erased spaces of patient autonomy—smoking rooms, corridors, toilets, corners, and so on—in relation to the institutional architectures of asylums and hospitals—particularly those of 19th Century asylums with interconnected or surveillance architectures—that were decommissioned during the early 2000s and converted into luxury housing. https://emmabolland.net/The-Expanded-Librarian Sat, 23 Sep 2023 11:12:41 +0000 Emma Bolland https://emmabolland.net/The-Expanded-Librarian The Expanded Librarian <img width="1286" height="992" width_o="1286" height_o="992" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a186daf2c5c4d7d5d57ebd4a7c90ef29ce76feb22176a12c3d25136102ab6960/Expanded-librarian-thumbnail.jpg" data-mid="191628312" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a186daf2c5c4d7d5d57ebd4a7c90ef29ce76feb22176a12c3d25136102ab6960/Expanded-librarian-thumbnail.jpg" /> The Expanded Librarian: Text+Image relations in post-photographic contexts and literary environments is a research group devised by Beverley Carruthers (UAL) and Wiebke Leister (RCA), to investigate contemporary modes of collaborative image-text-production in collaboration with CRASSH at the University of Cambridge. Participants are divided into four sub-groups: Text+Image Migrations: translation, transcription, transformation Text+Image Remediations: intermediality, reproduction, intertextuality Text+Image Interpretations: (creative) mis-recognitions &amp; mis-identifications Text+Image Automations: constructed &amp; generated content I am delighted to be part of group three, working with Jane Glennie (artist and independent scholar), Nicholas Lambouris (artist and assistant professor at Frederick University, Cyprus), and Wiebke Leister (artist and research tutor at the Royal College of Art). The Expanded Librarian Group holds regular seminars with guest speakers, and will be having an exhibition and conference at CRASSH, University of Cambridge, in early 2024. https://emmabolland.net/DeepDive Sat, 23 Sep 2023 11:20:26 +0000 Emma Bolland https://emmabolland.net/DeepDive #DeepDive <img width="4000" height="3000" width_o="4000" height_o="3000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0dbba0267753c9e2208be07a147c3c91d2e14d4dbe21f87f08daddf6542a7e3b/DeepDive-thumbnail.jpg" data-mid="191628568" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0dbba0267753c9e2208be07a147c3c91d2e14d4dbe21f87f08daddf6542a7e3b/DeepDive-thumbnail.jpg" /> #DeepDive is a space for artists and writers to come together to undertake an ‘archaeology’ of their sketchbooks and notebooks (physical/digital). What did I scribble? Bookmark? Notate / photate? When and why? What does this process of retrieval do? The events are hybrid, enabling participants to be present both physically (in Sheffield) and digitally (via Zoom). There is no pressure to share, or to stay for the whole time. The first #DeepDive took place on the 3rd of August and I plan to organise more in the coming months. Contact me if interested. https://emmabolland.net/Sludgy-Pink Sat, 23 Sep 2023 11:25:56 +0000 Emma Bolland https://emmabolland.net/Sludgy-Pink Sludgy Pink The term SLUDGY PINK is a provisional thinking phrase for the conversations between myself (Emma Bolland) and the artist Gary Simmonds. We consider the processes of abstraction in our separate practices and ask questions of ourselves and of wider practices and ideas of abstraction. We share an interest in 20th Century British Modernism and use the absurd ‘materialness’ of the phrase SLUDGY PINK to think about alternative ways to consider and respond to the richness of modernist collections and archives held in regional museums—many acquired during periods when regional collections were funded and valued, and many are now under threat as some regional museums are now being closed and their collections have disappeared. In 2024, we will each have a piece of work on loan to the Graves Gallery, to be included in the rehang of their abstract collection in specific relation to works by Naum Gabo, Tess Jaray, Jean Spencer, and others. <img width="3556" height="4741" width_o="3556" height_o="4741" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/72a0f083212ad642c3d10ae9d61c8379a2bbec9c184ee868d65cf1e1eed972d3/DSCF1308a.jpg" data-mid="191629233" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/72a0f083212ad642c3d10ae9d61c8379a2bbec9c184ee868d65cf1e1eed972d3/DSCF1308a.jpg" /> <img width="3507" height="4676" width_o="3507" height_o="4676" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6006848b3d21586e4c1d3c2e2f35c3cca551eecf912400bc105fd451fde8644a/DSCF1307a.jpg" data-mid="191629231" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6006848b3d21586e4c1d3c2e2f35c3cca551eecf912400bc105fd451fde8644a/DSCF1307a.jpg" /> <img width="3589" height="4785" width_o="3589" height_o="4785" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f4fbe6f3fcede585753dc53a84a0136734edb8efdf84a91c8e2a927cc7a9e73b/DSCF1319a.jpg" data-mid="191629232" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f4fbe6f3fcede585753dc53a84a0136734edb8efdf84a91c8e2a927cc7a9e73b/DSCF1319a.jpg" /> https://emmabolland.net/headCASEhpo Sat, 23 Sep 2023 11:44:27 +0000 Emma Bolland https://emmabolland.net/headCASEhpo headCASEhpo headCASEhpo is a new curatorial project, using the Edwardian glass-fronted notice board on the corner of the Head Post Office Building, (formally the Head Sheffield Post Office, and now home to Sheffield Hallam University’s Department of Art and Design) as a gallery. The first exhibition will open in late October 2023 and will include works by Louise Bourgeois and Jenny Holzer. More details coming soon... <img width="2992" height="2992" width_o="2992" height_o="2992" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3c0498ec7245876410952028ff7ee6592a0ce8b55ed4ba18ab8d2130aa6747dc/headCASEhpo-thumbnail.jpg" data-mid="191629795" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3c0498ec7245876410952028ff7ee6592a0ce8b55ed4ba18ab8d2130aa6747dc/headCASEhpo-thumbnail.jpg" />