Adaptations

Katie Louise Surridge (1985) was born and raised in London. She studied for her BA at the Slade and later spent three years training at the National School of Blacksmithing in Hereford, an experience that completely transformed her approach to making.

Her practice focuses on fostering a connection to tools and processes, often categorized as craft—a distinction she enjoys questioning. She blends traditional skills, such as blacksmithing and bronze casting, with contemporary techniques, creating a historical mash-up of methods.

Katie’s Adaptions project aims to develop a course that she will run from her workshop in Essex, where participants will build their own mini bronze furnaces inspired by Bronze Age pit furnaces. The course will teach welding and fabrication skills during the creation of the furnaces and demonstrate how to cast metal sculptures using the equipment participants build. These portable devices will allow attendees to continue developing their skills independently. To prepare for this, Katie plans to observe various casting courses to refine her approach and showcase her project at the Festival of Metals at Butser Ancient Farm.

A strong advocate for working with hands and tools, Katie sees this as a means to spark both conversation and creation. This concept became central to her practice after winning the DARE Art Prize in 2022. Her Modern Mining project, a community initiative, involved extracting copper from discarded electrical waste and recasting it into sculptures. She seeks to expand on this holistic approach through her developed course.

The selection panel for the 2024 Adaptations award consisted of Rain Howard – artist and 2023 Adaptations awardee, Kirsty Ogg – independent curator, Amanprit Sandhu – independent curator and educator and Holly Willats – independent curator and researcher.

We were looking for applications that

• Proposed a change in how you work
• Suggested an innovative approach to making artistic practice more sustainable
• Supported you practically and financially
• Supported the creative development of your artistic practice
• Might provide wider insight into our research

• APPLICATIONS CLOSED Monday 16 September 2024
• Week commencing 7 October 2024 shortlisted applicants contacted for interview
• Week commencing 21 October 2024: interviews take place (on Zoom)
• Week commencing 28 October 2024: all applicants informed of results
• January 2025: Project period begins

2023 Selection Panel

The selection panel for the 2023 Adaptations award were artists Emma Edmonson and Lu Williams (Dog Ear), curator and former director of Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Kirsty Ogg and writer and curator Holly Willats.

Lu Williams and Emma Edmonson are former awardees of Adaptations. They used the award in 2021 to test and cement their approach to collaboration for their initiative Dog Ear. A place for contemporary art publishing and sculptural dog toys.

Kirsty Ogg is former director of Bloomberg New Contemporaries, the UK’s foremost annual arts initiative, offering critical support and exposure to recent graduates and final year students from British Art Schools. Prior to this she has worked as director of The Showroom (1998 – 2009), Curator at Whitechapel Gallery, London (2009 – 2013) where she re-launched the Whitechapel Gallery’s The London Open and has curated numerous freelance projects across the UK.

Holly Willats is an independent curator & writer, and the Director of the arts organisation, Art Licks. She is based across both London and the North York Moors. Holly Willats is the independent researcher who will be working with the selected artists to develop Artquest’s research.

2021/2022

In 2021/2022 three Adaptations awards were made to Emma Edmonson and Lu Williams (Dog Ear), Libby Heaney and Tamara Stoll

Lu Williams and Emma Edmonson / Dog Ear

Lu and Emma have worked together on workshops, events and publications. They used the Adaptations award to cement a collaborative practice exploring play, feminist economics, critical language and DIY ethos. They both live and work in Southend.

Lu Williams creates and commissions art through events, publications and workshops; exploring working class culture, intersectional feminism and social activism. They make sculpture, installation and sticker and zine print interventions and founded Grrrl Zine Fair. GZF functions as a platform for artists who make zines, a touring queer zine library, zine workhops and Grrrl In Print zine.

Investigations into hierarchies, precarity and alternative economics are at the center of Emma Edmondson’s research and practice. She founded TOMA, a postgraduate level art programme outside the traditional institutional model created in response to hierarchies surrounding access to higher education. She uses sculpture and text and sees TOMA and her teaching work as part of her creative practice.

With the Adaptations award Emma and Lu began developing Dog Ear, a place for contemporary art publishing and sculptural dog toys. Dog Ear will bypass the gallery, bringing contemporary art directly into people’s homes, through newly commissioned artist-designed dog toys accompanied by artist-written texts.

Libby Heaney

Libby Heaney is an artist with a PhD in quantum physics, who makes conceptual artworks with emerging technologies like machine learning and quantum computers.

The resulting videos, performances and participatory experiences question the machine’s dominant forms of categorization and playfully propose alternatives, undoing existing biases and forging new expressions of collective identity and belonging with each other and the world.

For Adaptations Heaney dug into the themes of collective identity, belonging and hybridity in and around Heaney’s allotment in Hackney. Heaney used the award to weave her experience of community on the allotment into her digital art practice. She worked to benefit the allotment/estate, taking a discursive bottom-up approach on a project led by local residents.

Tamara Stoll

Tamara Stoll’s practice links photography and social exchanges with self-publishing; working collectively and collaboratively — as photographer, artist, activist. Her interest is in the city of today: the street as social unit and the individuals and groups shaping it. Stoll sees both threatened by gentrification and marginalisation. She employs documentary, oral history, and archival strategies to activate marginal histories. These have led to community-engaged and public interventions, workshops, exhibitions, events, collective action and publishing.

With the Adaptations award, Stoll developed a collaborative DIY-publishing initiative called ‘Road Less Travelled Press’ — each volume is a micro-collaboration and specific exploration of individual or collective action in public space. Through research and mentoring with four presses and publishing organisations in London and collaborating with designer Rose Nordin, she created a resilient DIY blueprint for a regular print output.

2022 Selection panel

The 2021/2022 Adaptations award was selected by Artquest independent curators Denis Dizon and Amanprit Sandhu.

Dennis Dizon (b. 1985, Manila, Philippines) is an independent researcher, artist and digital curator. He created MATTERS OF—a virtual platform and experimental inquiry into a queer techno-ecological.

Amanprit Sandhu is a London based curator and writer with a focus on commissioning, performance-based practices and collaborative approaches to working. Her recent work includes organising the inaugural biennial programme for Brent in London, and co-curator of the 2021 Boras Art Biennial in Sweden.

Artist interviews

A series of interviews explored the journey of awardees over the course of the award.