UWTSD Photography in the Arts graduate Lauren Pitson has been awarded a Breakthrough Artist Fellowship from the Artists Futures Fund.
Formerly known as the Artists’ Benevolent Fund, the Artists Futures Fund supports talented individuals to overcome barriers that would prevent them from pursuing careers as artists.
Lauren is a multi-disciplinary artist based in South Wales. She completed her MA Contemporary Dialogues at the University’s Swansea
College of Art last year and was awarded a distinction. She also studied for her PCET (Post Compulsory Education and Training) at UWTSD and was awarded a first-class honours BA in Photography in the Arts from the University in 2017.
Lauren said:
“The award is an opportunity to extend my practice while exploring new techniques and materials without restrictions. By gaining access to facilities, a studio space and the aid of mentors, I will be able to develop my career as an artist further.”
UWTSD’s Swansea College of Art is supporting Lauren as part of its collaboration partnership with the charity.
Ryan Eynon-Moule, Head of Undergraduate Photographic Studies said:
“We are pleased to share our ongoing partnership with the Artists Future Fund by sharing news of this year’s Breakthrough Artist Fellowship recipient Lauren Pitson.
“This award offers Lauren a large studio space at the heart of our programmes to develop her practice, supported by a grant of £10,000.
Lauren will exhibit the work produced in a solo exhibition at Stiwdio Griffith next year.”
The 10-month programme is delivered in partnership with five selected Higher Education Institutions across Wales and England and runs from October 2024 – July 2025.
Lauren’s practice and research are predominantly influenced by thoughts surrounding impermanence, ecology and the form. Her work often combines photography with alternative processes by collecting, deconstructing and reprocessing materials in order to document and explore this connection.
Her latest work, ‘I Peel into Other Vessels’ explores the concept that everything is intertwined in a continuous network of regenesis. By investigating the idea that all human and non-human life are connected in an ecological entanglement.
The work seeks to combine bio and eco materials such as the incorporation and production of bacterial cellulose (SCOBY). The SCOBY is propagated, monitored, dried and rehydrated continuously to later be interwoven with images of specimens undergoing stages of decay. By embedding the specimens within a living organism with a continuous reproductive cycle, this acts as a reminder of intertwined networks and organisms perpetually replenishing each other.
Lauren’s work was recently showcased in The World Without Us, at Ffotogallery, Cardiff, an exhibition that focused closely on our relationship with the natural environment and the growing climate crisis.
