Artist-in-Residence Nisha Duggal Joins ROSL

ROSL is pleased to announce Nisha Duggal as Artist-in-Residence in partnership with Riverley Primary School in Leyton, East London. Thanks to generous funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Nisha will create original artworks in response to the heritage and communities of ROSL and the pupils and locality of Riverley, to be displayed at exhibition events in mid-July.

Nisha works internationally, including installations at ArtNight and Watermans (London), Arnolfini (Bristol), Ginza Art Lab (Tokyo), Baltic (Gateshead), and Oriel Mostyn (Llandudno), with screenings at Videobabel (Cusco, Peru), European Media Art Festival (Osnabrueck, Germany), Rekalde (Bilbao, Spain), Cornerhouse (Manchester) and Iniva (London). She been awarded commissions by Site Gallery (Sheffield) and Contemporary Art Forum (Kitchener, Ontario), and was shortlisted for the Jerwood Moving Image Awards in 2008 and the Jerwood/Umbrella Moving Image Awards in 2013.

Over a ten-week period Nisha will explore the heritage of ROSL’s historic Grade I listed home, Over-Seas House, whilst also working with Year 5 pupils from Riverley, supporting them to reflect on their own differing community experiences of heritage alongside that of Over-Seas House. Many of the pupils have rarely left their own part of East London or discovered the exceptional heritage of Central London. They may not feel that buildings such as Over-Seas House have a connection to their own lives and we wish to share our heritage with the pupils to enable them to gain information on these buildings, increase confidence in their knowledge over the histories and purposes of these types of buildings, and to increase their skills in making creative responses to Over-Seas House and the purpose of ROSL in Central London.

Nisha will devise and deliver art workshops based on developing their own creative practice, inspired by the project themes. Throughout the project, both Nisha and pupils will create artworks, which at the end of the project will be showcased at two launch events, one at ROSL and the other at Riverley Primary School, as part of the annual Griffin Arts Festival.

On conclusion of the project, we will install long-term exhibitions and webpages at both ROSL and Riverley to display the project outputs and outcomes and to acknowledge the generous support from National Lottery players through The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Members will already have seen Nisha around the clubhouse with her camera as she starts to take inspiration from the heritage of our buildings. Yesterday was Nisha’s first visit to Riverley Primary School to meet the two Year 5 classes. In advance of her visit the pupils had been asked to bring in items from home which mean something to them, their family and their communites. Nisha spent time with the children and photographed each one, chatting with them about their objects, which will form part of an initial film, as the project develops.

Look out for more details on the ROSL website, eNewsletters and the Overseas magazine.