Artist in Residence, Battersea Arts Centre, 2016

I spent 5 months living and working at Battersea Arts Centre as Artist in Residence. The building was in flux, having recently suffered a major fire, and was in the process of being restored. Researching the radical history of the arts centre, I found it was the venue for the first performance of Cornelius Cardew’s Treatise. Exploring the shell of the building, I was attracted by the abstract diversity of exposed cable channels, builders’ marks, plaster cracks and other imperfections revealed in the many rooms awaiting restauration. They seemed to form irregular patterns that I felt could be played – or danced – or sung. In my open studio exhibition at the end of the residency I exhibited a number of these ‘found scores’ and invited visitors to play or perform them on the piano in the room or in any other way. I hope to collaborate with musicians or dancers in the future to realise some of these scores, which offer an echo of the past of BAC’s characterful rooms, although the marks are long since neatly covered by redecoration.