Artist in Residence: Morgan Quaintance

NNCA (NN Contemporary Art) is excited to announce that London-based artist and writer Morgan Quaintance will be its new Artist in Residence from March to June 2023. During his residency, Morgan will research and begin preliminary production for a new exhibition that will draw across different strands of his practice, including moving image, photography, performance, and installation.

Morgan will explore the audio recordings of the Northamptonshire Black History Archives to begin work on sound compositions and shoot 16mm footage of the surrounding Northamptonshire countryside. He will also investigate building interiors, light fixtures, and reflections, with the opportunity to use the new NN building at 24 Guildhall Road as a subject to deepen and expand this series of works.

Morgan is an accomplished artist whose moving image work has been widely exhibited at festivals and institutions worldwide, including MOMA in New York, Konsthall C in Sweden, and the European Media Art Festival in Germany. He is the 2023 IFFR Short Film Nominee for the European Film Awards, the recipient of the 2022 ARTE Award at Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, and has won several other awards for his films.

In addition to his filmmaking, Morgan is a renowned writer whose critically incisive writings on contemporary art, aesthetics, and their socio-political contexts have appeared in publications such as Art Monthly, The Wire, and The Guardian. His contributions have helped shape the landscape of discourse and debate in the UK.

NNCA is thrilled to have Morgan Quaintance as its new Artist in Residence and looks forward to seeing the exciting work that he will produce during his time with us

About the artist

Morgan Quaintance is a London-based artist and writer. His moving image work has been shown and exhibited widely at festivals and institutions including: MOMA, New York; Mcevoy Foundaton for the Arts, San Francisco; Konsthall C, Sweden; David Dale, Glasgow; European Media Art Festival, Germany; Alchemy Film and Arts Festival, Scotland; Images Festival, Toronto; International Film Festival Rotterdam; and Third Horizon Film Festival, Miami.

He is the 2023 IFFR Short Film Nominee for the European Film Awards; the recipient of the 2022 ARTE Award at Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg; in 2021, the Best Documentary Short Film Award at Tacoma Film Festival, USA; the Explora Award at Curtocircuito International Film Festival, Santiago de Compostela; the UK Short Film Award at Open City Documentary Film Festival, London, the Jean Vigo Prize for Best Director at Punto de Vista, Spain, and the Best Experimental Film Award at Curtas Vila do Conde, Portugal; in 2020, the New Vision Award at CPH:DOX, Denmark and the Best Experimental Film award at Curtas Vila Do Conde, Portugal.

You can find out more about Morgan Quaintance at his website here.

About the Artist in Residence Programme

24 Guildhall Road provides many opportunities to build upon the legacy of Number 9 Guildhall Road and The Fishmarket as an artist-led space. We believe that in order for Art to become a meeting place, a place of debate, a forum, and in-situ space of experimentation, the support and development of artistic practices must sit at the core of our activity. 24 Guildhall Road has been designed and developed to offer artists living and working opportunities. It will be focused on developing research & process to allow the reconfiguration of traditional art institution categories.

Through placing artistic development at the forefront of the programme, different stages develop our capacity to work with artists and adapt to their needs, but also create new ideals and challenge their practices.

At NN artistic practice will be framed as a collective process; a project can have a varied and process driven outcome, it will be specific to the ecosystem that is created in Northamptonshire and develop a never ending process implied through a myriad of actors, linked to its economies of production, circulation and maintenance.

Our inaugural artist in residence programme began in 2021. We have offered paid residencies for artists to take up a period of research and development time in Northampton, to create a project that contributes to the blueprint of our future institution and think through our history, to understand the present as a space of possibility.