Alice Wilson

At DOLPH we set a brief. The artist’s objective is to frame an exhibition that contextualises the interests and concerns driving their practice. How they do this is up to them. They set their own terms. They are their own curators.

In September, Alice Wilson will respond to the DOLPH brief. Earlier this year, in collaboration with the Littoral Trust, DOLPH arranged for Wilson to stay at the Merz Barn in Cumbria for a three-week research residency in preparation for her London exhibition. She says:

“In each instance of attempting a starting point from which to respond to the DOLPH brief I have mused on what makes me tick. I like entertainment where a central female protagonist suffers and by the end all hope
is lost, Lars von Trier is very good at this. I attribute this preference to a very superficial enjoyment of nihilism (nihilism in principal). The source material for my making of art is (superficially) ‘landscape’, DOLPH were kind enough to send me on a residency to the Merz Barn slap bang in the middle of the Lake District landscape. In focusing on my influences I have been thinking about the inevitability of what I make and do, reflecting on my own education and my role in art education, I have dubbed my approach to DOLPH ‘An Ambition to Unlearn’, as such I will attempt to construct an exhibition that exposes my construct.”

You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are very sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent this must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system.

Doris Lessing, 1971.