We are excited to share that artist Appau Junior Boakye-Yiadom will be the inaugural Donna Lynas Residency recipient – a pioneering opportunity for an artist at a key moment in their career.
The residency is supported by four cultural organisations over three years; Wysing Arts Centre, South London Gallery, Modern Art Oxford and Somerset House Studios. Boakye-Yiadom will receive £16,000 a year for three years (2023-6) and the support of each partner – including mentoring, use of facilities and potential inclusion in public programme, if the artist should wish.
Appau Junior Boakye-Yiadom (b. 1984, London) works across multimedia installation and performance, combining ready-made objects, sculpture, photography sound, archive and self-produced moving image to create installations with multilayered references, highlighting cultural collision. Incorporating snippets of film footage and fragments of sound into works, as well as collaborating with musicians for live improvisation.
Donna Lynas was a Curator who was widely known for her role as Director of Wysing Arts Centre and as a long term supporter of artist development. Each institution involved had a relationship with Donna Lynas (1967-2021). Lynas was Curator at Modern Art Oxford (1995-1999) and then Curator at South London Gallery (1999-2005), and was an instrumental advisor for Somerset House Studios whilst they were building their studios and artist development programme. Lynas was widely known in the arts industry for supporting artists over long periods of time, and giving them opportunities when they needed it the most.
The residency celebrates Lynas’ legacy but it also comes at a critical moment in terms of conversations around artist pay, and the sustainability of artists’ careers, long-term. Each institution engaged in the Donna Lynas Residency programme is doing so because it is clear that cultural institutions need to contribute actively to finding ways to make being an artist a real career choice for all. There is no expectation of an outcome to the residency: the purpose is to provide stability, and time to reflect outside the pressures of production and the habits of daily life.