Today we’d like to introduce you to Zero Space Collective Founding Members. Them and their team share their story with us below:
Zero Space Art Collective currently includes founding members Lauren Bradshaw, Brooke Day, and Jessica Swank. As a collective, we are currently in the process of expanding our member base. Applications are currently open on our website. Our goal is to create space virtually as well as physically by continuing to obtain exhibition opportunities throughout the Southeast and beyond. Our upcoming exhibitions include “Transient Bodies” at the Revolve Gallery in Asheville, NC, “Visceral Bonds” at Vandiver Gallery in Anderson, SC, and a solo exhibition of Jessica Swank’s work curated by Brooke Day at the Slocumb Galleries in Johnson City, TN.
We began when we found ourselves trying to build community while studying and making art during a time that provided no access to studios, limited access to supplies, and only virtual access to other humans. In response to the 2020 quarantine that resulted from the Covid-19 pandemic, we developed a means of support and connection by creating the Zero Space Art Collective. Though our group began as a reaction to the devastating changes we were experiencing, we acknowledge that ever having had studios and community is a privilege. As artists, we can not always rely on academia or external funding to help us achieve our goals, but what we can do is build a community that supports other artists in a variety of ways.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We started as graduate students who suddenly found themselves without space or resources, but with the privilege of community. Our greatest endeavor is to find ways to create inclusivity, equity, and accessibility within the collective. We aim to facilitate advocacy for marginalized populations and dismantle harmful and exclusive social constructions and institutional powers. Our goal is to hold ourselves and each other accountable by working collectively to uphold and maintain our values while acknowledging and challenging our inequities and biases and working toward the direction of social change. The pursuit of our organization to become universally accessible and expansive into diverse leadership and membership is an evolving and ongoing mission. We believe that this comradery should not only exist in times of crisis but be available indefinitely.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
As a small collective, we all currently find ourselves creating through the lens of human experience, bodily autonomy, and abjection. Lauren Bradshaw is a ceramic and fiber artist interested in revealing the tensions between bodily dichotomies such as hard versus soft or internal versus external to reflect the fragility of our entropic bodies and serve as an interplay between fluctuating levels of material impermanence. Brooke Day is an interdisciplinary artist creating enchanted replication installations utilizing grotesque corporeal vessels, storytelling, and biological materials to address imagination as a means to dismantle social constructions and enact positive change. Jessica Swank is a photography and sculpture-based artist who addresses the relationship between humans and digital technology through the intersection of organic and synthetic materials, employing methods of self-extension, fragmentation and recontextualization to represent the merging of these entities. You can find more about each of our individual studio practices at our websites below!
www.laurenbradshawart.com
www.brookeday.art
www.jessicaswank.art
We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
You don’t need physical space to create community.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.zerospacecollective.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zerospacecollective/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zerospacecollective
