Art Office

The fact that art casts a different view on the world is the driving force behind Ash Kilmartin's plan: to look at today's politics through medieval illuminations. To this end, she wanted to explore drawing and calligraphy techniques and, on the basis of a study in medieval studies, conduct research into the allegory, its narrative techniques and the possibilities of humor in it. These ingredients form a plan for collaboration with researchers, typographers and artists. The intended end result is a number of large drawings and a publication with texts based on allegorical listening figures. She partly wanted to design and exhibit these in a residency in Syb in Beetsterzwaag. “Adopting an anachronistic imagery and way of speaking – and developing my own style based on that – allows me to convey the possibilities of a contemporary feminist listening ethic, through various mediums.”

New Zealand native Kilmartin has an international network and resume, with exhibitions and performances in Australia, Georgia, Iceland and more. She was affiliated with the Printroom in Rotterdam and makes her own publications. In it she tells poetically about communication in isolation. Her performances included a dreamlike monologue in a bar at Koffie & Ambacht, a whispering voice in the dark where the night takes over the ratio at Worm, a wandering soul in the city between all the powers there at Worm_Ubik.

This historical research is a new method for her, for which Kilmartin received support from the R&D committee. She was apprenticed to a calligraphist and then started talking to residents in Beetsterzwaag. Medieval relics there, such as bell-chairs. It led to new works, networks, and the confidence to set up ambitious projects. Accompanied by a choir from Groningen, she read to Syb in the midst of her allegorical drawings, formed by “thinking about what a contemporary listening ethic is.” 'Rounding the bell to chase away demons,' wrote the Leeuwarder Courant about this presentation.