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strangers to ourselves was originally conceived in response to the social, political and economic issues surrounding migration and was shown simultaneously across 12 different venues in Kent and East Sussex in the autumn of 2003. The towns where the work was initially shown are often the first point of arrival and interim home for many while they await the outcome of our lengthy asylum application procedure in the hopes of moving eventually to one of the larger cities. Mimicking this process, strangers to ourselves has endeavoured over the last two years to obtain a foothold in one of the metropolitan cities, where the works can be brought together to engage with a different audience and with each other. Not surprisingly, and very appropriately, the works find themselves briefly occupying the basement of a former abattoir. From its inception this has been a complex project which was intended to go beyond the single-issue, themed exhibition; to raise questions not only about migration, but about the politics of space and the potential of visual practice. By coincidence the number of artists showing in this second stage is once again 23, of whom 18 were included in the original exhibition. The work shown is dominated by video and photography, a situation partly decided by the limitations of the venue and partly by the fact that this is the chosen medium of most of the artists involved. We are conscious that this makes it a difficult exhibition, but have left our curatorial presence deliberately shadowy, focussing on the selection of artists rather than on a constructed, cohesive whole.
As part of BALTIC Self-Publishing Artists' Market 2018 the Women Artists of the North East Library had a one-day residency in BALTIC Library researching the collection for records of exhibitions and projects by women artists associated with the North East. The documents found were pulled out of the collections to form a new online reading list of BALTIC Library. This also contributed to the Women Artists North East Library’s research.
This book now forms part of that reading list and includes the work of Rose Frain.
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