Associate Artists Programme

SEP 2022 - SEP 2024
Forma, Forma HQ, London

The Forma Associate Artists programme is a professional development initiative for artists and cultural thinkers to have a continued working relationship with the organisation beyond the conventional commissioning and exhibition model. Launched as a two-year scheme, the mutually beneficial partnership reflects Forma's long-term engagement with the artists we have previously supported. Depending on the artist’s needs, Forma can offer the Associate Artists a unique combination of mentoring and networking support; resources and spaces; moments to research and experiment an idea and small income opportunities. In exchange, we hope to build a more meaningful connection to the artist and their practice.

The 2022-24 round of the Associate Programme include Joseph Cutts, Cécile B. Evans, Gaia Di Lorenzo, Jameisha Prescod and Himali Singh Soin.

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As part of the Associate Artist Programme, initially Cutts will seek to locally address the improper ‘methods’ of waste recycling and work with Forma to advocate the need for clearer and cleaner methods in our local communities and the roles individuals can play to decrease their carbon footprint. Stemming from his artistic research that informed the recent exhibition and recycling programme Traces of a Cathode (S1 Artspace, 2023), Forma has become a temporary carrier for e-waste in the local Southwark area, ensuring all received electronic goods are recycled appropriately or refurbished for a longer lifespan.

Coinciding with this, Cutts has curated a selection of in-house reading material at Presse Books including publications and journals aligning with some of the directions of his work, that will continually grow during his research residency at Forma HQ over the next year. The selection echoes his ongoing research into the cycle and formation of electronic waste (obsolete or discarded electronic devices), as well as studies in early 20th century photographic experiments. They depict an in-depth photographic analysis of the journey from mineral to consumer item; to a fictionalised world where experiments in language cause technical malfunction; stories from an ‘unlocked’ found phone; scrutiny at airport customs; and how a garden can represent an individual and collective paradise, a place where although maintenance is required, can be transformed to become a space for healing.

Alongside this curated selection is a newly created video essay on a series of recent studies & accounts into the cycle & formation of electronic waste. Outlined through a series of personal and professional experiences, and made up of documents, tickets and photographs from Cutts' archives, he shares notes on the implications of importing and exporting overseas, the mass producing of elite goods, and the need for a stronger e-waste management programme, alongside recent artistic and curatorial depictions of metal forming processes, the measuring of the impact of your carbon footprint and the potential of hyperaccumulators.

Over the next year Cutts will localise his research further into the south east London region, highlighting and visiting specific plots of land and industrial organisations, learning of their roles in community planting, what lies beneath the land, a brief history of importing goods, and the functions of energy supplying & e-waste recycling. Following this Cutts' will conduct a series of plant based survey's, observing the growth of hyperaccumulators (also known as metal crops) - a type of plant capable of growing in soil or water with high concentrations of metals, absorbing these metals through their roots, and concentrating extremely high levels of metals in their tissues.

Complete Programme Listing here