Anna Curtz Price

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portrait of a boat and delight in the egglike world 

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earth paintings of 3 garden sculptures

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brockwell park + tower block 

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communal garden against backdrop of urban landscape (white) 

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canal side - vessels channeling electricity, boats and plant life 

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experiments with earth painting 

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playing card sized Thames surfaces 

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Oil triptych from A Level 

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oil painting based off visit to Venice 

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watery bodies - vessels, veins and dissolving into the sea

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Ourstreets

This piece is a reflection on the freedom which archives and the Our Street data give us to reimagine the spaces which we inhabit. It is based off a personal reaction to reading the survey responses and being made aware of all the places which I consider to be unremarkable (for example the bike locks near Queens) which are imbued with significance from other’s perspectives. I think of the archives like building materials - allowing one to inhabit an altered world which blurs the boundary between fantasy and reality through memory and putting oneself in the shoes of others. 

I studied an archive held at the UL of student protests and the Our Streets survey responses. I was struck by the photographs inside cardboard boxes, the traces of stories they revealed, the random details which were not central to the intention of the original recording. Archives are a way of claiming and reimagining space. From found material I made temporary interventions in the built environment in unremarkable places which were typical of the survey responses I found most interesting. I then recorded and memorialised these to highlight how they offered alternative perspectives on the environments I had placed them within. I took these photographic records and transformed them into more personal responses. Finally, I returned my responses to the locations which they originated from. Through this process of translation between the recorded and the real, which blurs the boundary between different spaces and different people’s narratives and memories I sought to demonstrate how archives can be used like building materials in playful and creative ways to rework space. I thought cardboard and the cardboard box provide an interesting link between the materiality of the archives (boxes in which they are stored) and the materials which tend to be used in order to reconfigure space (cardboard protest signs or dens made by children or shelters made by the homeless). I was inspired by hearing about a group of lesbian squatters in the 1970s in Hackney whose direct physical engagement with the built environment through the reclaiming of abandoned terraced houses, allowed them to create alternative worlds for themselves. Nevertheless, no material trace of their presence remains in the neighbourhood today.  

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Onsen women

The comfort in nudity. The rejection of specialness emphasised by the baggy khaki uniforms they hand out to trip between sauna and bath. Everyone the same. The superficial differences between bellies, breasts, age, height do not obscure our oneness - our common physicality - our duty to care, scrub, comb, exfoliate, appreciate.

Circular mirrors and the steam. Gazing at oneself did not feel like vanity - it felt like a celebration of physicality - an embrace of whatever it is that you inhabit. A giving up to the body.