On Thursday, 2nd October, Josephine Baker visited the Associate Studio Programme 11 in Stockwell. The last time Josephine had been in this studio space was around 15 years prior, when her peers were on this programme. In this time, she has completed her studies at the Royal Academy Schools (2014–2017) continued working as an artist and exhibited extensively and internationally (Beijing, Munich, London, Berlin, Rome etc.) Baker is an Artist, Associate Lecturer (and gardener) who only seriously started making sculpture some time out of her BA at St Martins (2009-2012). The context of the world around us has changed vastly in that time. It’s always valuable to have the opportunity to gain a new perspective, but specifically, what made this visit feel energising is the contextualisation of practice as a whole. What it means to work as an interdisciplinary artist – and having a realistic understanding and appreciation of what we need to feed practice. In a lot of ways, without this, the work is irrelevant because it isn’t sustainable. A studio visit in two halves, we spent time considering professional practice as a whole, and then spoke about recent work in the studio. Baker asked us to interrogate what the ‘Battery’ is within our practices. Artists world build, they make an arena and are playing within it. It’s unsurprising that this type of metaphor traverses between the language Baker is playing with in their work, and was present in their recent solo in Munich with Nir Altman ‘Prime Movers’ engages with processes which make up human and natural phenomena, the production of energy and specifically hydropower and wider logistical infrastructures.
I left this visit feeling invigorated – huge thank you to Josephine for taking time out to come and chat with us. Kit Lovelock
