I am delighted to share that I will be attending a six week residency in Southwest France from 06 May - 20 June. The residency is located in Champagne-Mouton, Charente, and I will be focusing on my British Council funded project Earth, a Cosmic Spectacle.

“Launch Pad LaB is pleased to announce Louise Beer, Anna Perach and Pilar Quinteros as the artists selected for the residency’s eleventh edition from May 6th – June 20th 2024. To conclude the residency, Curator and Writer Debbie Meniru will moderate a day of studio visits and conversations with the artists.”

Launch Pad LaB is an artists’ residency program established in 2018 on the grounds of La Boissière, an ancestral home in rural southwest France. Developed by the owner, contemporary art collector and philanthropist Veronique de Champvallier Parke in collaboration with Sarah Lee Elson of Launch Pad, Launch Pad LaB offers artists the space and time for research and experimentation. The program provides the possibility to consider or produce a new body of work, to collaborate with others, or to generate responses to the local environment. The opportunity is aimed at artists established in a dedicated practice for whom a hiatus from the daily demands on their time and energies can make a difference in their creative productivity. Located in the countryside, Launch Pad LaB invites artists to engage in a quieter and more isolated environment that will ideally launch a new development in their practice. Twice a year, each edition of the residency accommodates up to four artists for 6-8 weeks, with housing, separate studios, transportation, and a stipend.

Veronique de Champvallier Parke and Sarah Lee Elson lead the selection process. While artists are expected to use the time productively, a finished work of art at the end of the residency is not expected. Each edition of Launch Pad LaB features collateral events, bringing the artists’ research and processes to the attention of invited curators, collectors, other artists and professionals in the art world.

Anna Perach’s (b. 1985, Ukraine) practice explores the dynamic between personal and cultural myths. She is interested in how private narratives are deeply rooted in ancient folklore and storytelling. In her work, she interweaves female archetypes into sculptural hybrids in order to examine ideas of identity, gender, and craft. The main medium of her oeuvre is wearable sculpture and performance.

Pilar Quinteros (b.1988, Santiago, Chile) combines drawing, performance and video, all media that allow her to investigate themes related to history, notions of “reality” and transformations of specific contexts. Sculptures made out of cardboard that represented everyday and decorative objects are among the earlier ephemeral interventions in public spaces, while more recently, performances include life-sized monochromatic representations in volumetric form. The medium changes according to temporary, contextual and practical needs. Almost nothing of what the artist has made exists today, due to the low resistance and delicate materials she chooses to use.

Debbie Meniru is a London-based writer and curator. Her art writing leans into emotion, anecdote and humour and has been published internationally, including by Hatje Cantz, Rizzoli, Tate, Hayward Gallery Publishing, CURA., and Numéro Art. As a curator, Debbie has worked on exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery, Tate Modern, Somerset House and the Migration Museum. She has guest-curated The Conch at South London Gallery and Within a Budding Grove at Pi Artworks, London. She is currently Assistant Curator of Interpretation at Tate Modern and Tate Britain.