WSA Opportunities

Each year since 2010, Hyde900 has worked with visual artists to produce a range of exhibitions and events. Extending this tradition, Project Space 2017 forms the visual arts element of Hyde900’s broader, Heritage Lottery Funded ‘Hyde Abbey – the Lost Minster of King Alfred the Great’ project and for the first time, is offering bursaries to artists.

Project Space will run over the summer with artists working publicly in the Hyde Abbey precinct, responding to its rich cultural heritage and the site as it is today. The artists’ process of research and development as well as the resulting finished work may be seen and engaged with by visitors. The aim is to produce visually interpretative and conceptually rigorous explorations of the Hyde Abbey story while considering its lasting significance. At the same time, contemporary artists’ working practice will unfold. Documentation of the project will appear on the newly launching website in October as a long-term legacy.

Call to Artists

Hyde900 seeks high-calibre, research-led artists to submit proposals for 6 x £300 bursaries to research and respond to the narrative and site of ‘Hyde Abbey: Lost Minster of King Alfred the Great’ as part of the broader programme of events, walks and talks taking place in the abbey precinct in 2017.

Specifically, artists are asked to:

• choose either the first (7 May–26 Jul) or second (26 Jul–26 Oct) stage,
• conduct visual research in the abbey precinct’s public spaces for an equivalent of 18 hours of their choosing over
  the stage,
• *produce final display/ an installation/ intervention for exhibition at the end of their stage,
• conceive and conduct a 2-hour public engagement activity, ideally during exhibition phase,
• insure themselves and their work, provide a risk assessment if necessary, liaise with site stakeholders directly and seek permissions where required provide a brief artist’s statement/journal and photographs to document progress, provide content for promotional activity to ultimately form an online legacy.

*Please note, the scale of artist’s projects should be commensurate with the overall 20- hour engagement and bursary, so while we seek proposals that are site-specific, challenging and ambitious in concept, we do not expect highly finished or high budget finished artworks for final exhibition, rather we expect works to be ephemeral, low tech and materially simple. Similarly, well-developed working stages would also be acceptable at final exhibition if they demonstrate in-depth research for a yet unrealised, larger scale work.

Artists may wish to collaborate with others, e.g. writers or musicians. Artists are encouraged to engage with other Hyde900 activities, such as the community archaeological dig in late April or various talks and walks over the summer (see the website).

Artists might utilise one or more heritage aspects, such as:

• the Winchester School or style of illuminated manuscripts e.g. Benediction of St Aethelwold (British Library), which – was held at Hyde Abbey
• Cnut and Emma’s cross – now lost
• Abbot Aston’s crozier (V&A)
• The Hyde capitals (St Bartholomew’s – church/ Winchester Museum)
• The Hyde Abbey seals and documents (Winchester College, Records office – London etc)
• Re-use of stones, timbers, glass and tiles – (Hyde900/ Winchester Museum)
• Anglo-Saxon pilgrimage and relics
• Hyde Abbey monastic life
• Archaeological processes – loss, recovery – and re-imagining in Hyde
• King Alfred the Great and family
• Hyde900/BBC’s ‘Unmarked Grave and the Search for Alfred’ story
• Secular life around the Abbey precinct