The Victoria and Albert Museum’s Residency Programme facilitates space for art, design and performance practitioners from a multitude of disciplines to activate the Museum’s collections through their work. We are excited to announce a new open call for applications from UK-based practitioners who wish to develop their practice or portfolio. We want practitioners to explore the Museum’s collections and connect with our audiences in creative and innovative ways.
We are particularly interested to hear from you if you work with sculpture, in the broadest sense, and are interested in critically responding to the theme of shifting perspectives. We are also looking for applications that explore ideas of collaboration, representation and absence through three-dimensional objects or artworks.
This invitation coincides with a forthcoming V&A exhibition on Italian Renaissance sculpture, which will combine a thematic approach with chronology, and also address the inter-relationship between sculpture, paintings, drawings and goldsmiths’ work. For the duration of this project, many sculptures from Room 64a in the Medieval & Renaissance Galleries will be relocated to the exhibition. This provides a fantastic opportunity to respond to their absence in the gallery space. As one part of the residency, we therefore ask applicants to take the absent sculptures as their starting point to inhabit, respond or work within the space.
For this residency, we want you to have experience of, or an interest in, working with a Young People’s programme and for an artist-led or co-produced project to feature during their time with the museum. We are keen for the residency to inform this output, and for applicants to emphasise what skill sets they would like to deliver or facilitate with young people. We would like someone to make these collections accessible to a diverse group, and commit to a project that provides mentoring to develop the networks of the group they engage with.
Since 2008, the V&A has hosted over 60 residents, who have had unique access to the world’s leading collection of art, design and performance, as well as a wealth of curatorial expertise. The Residency Programme is special to the V&A because it enables us to connect with our audiences in creative and innovative ways. Residents draw upon the V&A’s vast collections to carry out research and create new work that pushes boundaries of creative practice, as well as offer fresh perspectives that encourage the institution’s innovation and evolution.
The residency will take place at the V&A South Kensington in London over a nine-month period from 12 October 2022 – 14 July 2023. The V&A will provide a £12,000 bursary, and a studio space within the museum’s Sackler Centre.
This residency application process will follow two stages. The deadline for stage one of open call is 6 July 2021.
Full details on the residency and application process please head to the residencies page.
