This week, we’ve had some good news about a new project!
Arts Council England have awarded a Project Grant to the abstract painter Angela Charles. This will support the Somerset-based artist in a crucial period of transition as she adapts to sight loss and blindness.
Working with OSR Projects as producers, and filmmaker Liberty Smith, Angela will document, question and share the challenging process of opening up to a critical peer network about sight loss as a visual artist.
Since graduating from Goldsmiths in 1989, Angela Charles (also known as Angela Blackwell) has combined her career as an award winning Curator with that of a visual artist. From regular shows in St Ives to commissions for a high profile exhibition in Milan, Angela has achieved commercial success with her paintings drawn from her memories of place.
And yet, unbeknown to purchasers of her work and the galleries that represent her, for the last ten years Angela has been losing her sight. After a dramatic deterioration over the last two years she is now registered Blind, with a condition originally diagnosed as Retinitis Pigmentosa, now referred to as Retinal Dystrophy.
Angela has felt alone with what she refers to as her ‘guilty secret’ still painting and exhibiting whilst denying the existence of her Blindness and her Guide Dog to buyers and galleries. It is only now, after much personal turmoil, she has decided to ‘come out as a Blind painter’.
She will work with Liberty Smith, a documentary filmmaker working across commissions for gallery exhibition, mainstream television and online platforms in the UK and internationally. This collaboration will be experimental and pose questions about the experience of seeing in visual art.
A culminating exhibition curated by Simon Lee Dicker will open at OSR Projects in Autumn 2021, while the collaborative film will premiere at Od Arts Festival 2021.
You can also catch Angela Charles next month, when she is a guest contributor to Solitary Encounters: A Seminar for Artists, Creatives and Curators on 13 March 2020. Book tickets now
