Anne Forgan reflects on her Hatching Residency

A place of permission.

I shouldn’t need it, but still I do.

Permission to take time, make mistakes, not know exactly what I’m doing. 

The Nest Residency gave me that. 

I was welcomed into a well designed, thoughtful, warm space where I could spend time just how I liked. 

A space away from all of the things that can sabotage me. 

A room with space to move around the work, look at it from different heights, different types of lighting at different times of day. 

An elegant space, a bit like a gallery, where the work could sit in the space and either suggest additional changes, iterations. And take a good photo!

A friendly place, alongside other people working on their own creative endeavours. People thinking hard, talking, making, socialising and listening. 

A place to thrive. 

I make 2D and 3D artworks – mostly in reused textiles and cardboard. I’ve been playing with sculptural shapes that combine both very rigid, simple cardboard chain making processes with unruly, somewhat sinister tentacles made with wire and shreds of textiles. They are hairy spidery shapes – sometimes with splashes of pattern and colour. Uneven and misshapen, these cardboard chains are created using obscure weaving techniques that aren’t particularly functional or beautiful. But they do look great en masse and so my challenge is to make enough of any of these shapes for the work to look impactful. I can make about 2 metres of chains per day – not very much really. I use colourful herbal tea packets cut up into strips and then folded into chains. I’ve also been playing with Amazon packaging – their envelopes have just the right level of flexibility and the brown cardboard does somehow evoke something of the rustic straw weaving that’s been my recent inspiration. 

I do enjoy creating 3D shapes from the chains; spiralling them and using wire to make them hang in space. They make me think of digital animations – in fact I recently played with an AR app that bears a similarity to the look of my sculptures…something I’ll explore further at some point. I enjoyed creating them as wall-based pieces that explode outwards – I can almost hear the creaking sounds they make, as they evolve and grow. 

As someone who spends a lot of time planning and thinking, I embraced the opportunity to act and make. I found it a bit magical to generate physical objects from unpromising looking materials – making my way, bringing my own odd inner world into the Nest space. 

I made a range of kinds of shapes and objects – working instinctively as the materials told me how to fold, bend and shape them. What I made was a surprise to me, but made sense and built on previous works. I’m intrigued by what I’ve made and I know they point to more possibilities that I have to interrogate in future. 

What did this residency remind me? Essentially; there are no shortcuts. The work takes the time it takes. It’s good to experiment with new techniques and reinvent your processes. But also to trust that by allowing your hands to work in familiar ways, you let go of the striving and accept the limitations (and possibilities) of what you can do. 

Every piece of work has the potential to be the first in a series that you could carry on iterating for the rest of your life. But it’s also okay to diversify; surprise yourself – bring in something that wasn’t in the original plan. 

This is why Nest works;  it’s a place of learning and trust. In this time and space, the work will emerge.