Artist in Residence
Faye Dobinson
July 2023 – April 2024
Above left: Faye Dobinson. Above right: keyholes of The Morrab Library
Faye Dobinson’s residency at Morrab Library was titled ‘Community Power Structure’, a phrase she borrowed from a book cover she spotted while visiting the library. She says: “I was drawn to the cover of a book for its formal qualities – the colour, the typography, and the illustration. The 1953 cover will be the visual starting point for my residency.”
Faye Dobinson
Faye is a South East London born and West Cornwall based multi-disciplinary artist, activist and educator. She is an artist, curator, a Celebrant and also leads ‘Defining Practice,’ a yearlong practical based art mentoring course at The Newlyn Art School. She is passionate about art and creativity’s role in creating conversation, community, and heart led change. The relational aspect within her work has resulted in her exhibiting and teaching in Mongolia, exhibiting and working with artists in Tibet, helping open Europe’s first Contemporary Tibetan Art Gallery in East London, ‘The Sweet Tea House’ and saw her implementing ‘The Jupiter Project’, a space of possibility for artists and creative that was based at Jupiter Gallery in Newlyn and finished in April 2023.
She lives in Penzance, UK, with her daughter. We asked her when she first remembers coming to the Morrab Library and what her memories are of the library from that time.
“I first visited Morrab Library late 2019 when I moved into town after living in Phillack (Hayle) then Perranuthnoe for 12 years. I was astonished at the tangible peace, the active and alive stillness of the place. It vibrated with all the words and thoughts contained within it. I felt that Lisa and her staff had made a special place even more potent.”
Faye works in a range of disciplines including painting, drawing, printing, site-specific work and assemblage, and has travelled widely to meet other creative communities and look at the role of art in their lives. This socially engaged practice has run through her 25-year career, finding form in leading a wide range of creative projects in London with disaffected young people, working with children with emotional and behavioural problems, within her teaching and also in her own artistic output that asks questions of culture, power and love.
Before her Residency Faye said: “I will be using different artistic processes to let the space of the library unpack around me: the architectural space, the library as a container of meaning, as a space for the community and as a loved space, special to me and many others”.
We asked her why she wanted to be Artist in Residence at The Morrab Library.
“I wanted to bring the different approaches of my artistic process to this wonderful building – to celebrate it through the act of tenderly paying attention.”
“Artist in Residencies create an opportunity for a place to influence and inspire an artist and for that artist to represent the place back to the community. It is a beautiful feedback loop!
I appreciate the very special space that it offers, the sense of community that it forges. My work is an active memorialising of this special community space: not in a solemn, static sense but, I hope, in a celebratory ‘alive’ sense
I hope to bring a loving quality of attention to the details of the library – the idiosyncrasies and particulars that, for me, create a portrait of the place. I will be noticing what I notice and chronicling that. To me a place can be explored through myriad artistic processes and through that, different facets of the space can be revealed as it begins to unpack through the details of the sounds, smells and sights. I hope to help the often quiet and unseen be noticed and appreciated.”
The artwork
Artist Faye Dobinson displayed the artwork created during her residency at The Morrab Library in the Elizabeth Treffry Room from Tuesday 23rd to Saturday 27th April 2024.
As the months progressed, she shared glimpses of the work on @communitypowerstructure, where she highlighted some of the lesser spotted details within the Library rooms, such as the locks and escutcheons. She explored the library through a myriad of different artistic processes and through that, different facets of the space revealed themselves and found form in curious and unexpected works of art. From moulds of obsolete locks to cyanotypes of plants outside.
Before her exhibition at The Morrab Library in April 2024, Faye commented:
“I have found that my time at Morrab has impacted my practice moving forward. I have a curious mind that is alive with possibilities, and a library- ESPECIALLY the Morrab-is like an embodiment of possibility.
You begin looking for a book on one thing, then find yourself on a magical mystery tour, led by what piques your curiosity. It is a broadly roaming journey that is impossible to have via google and other online means to research: Your own curiosity cannot be prescribed by the library, you are not just a generalised algorithm being presented with ideas.
To a library you are an intrigued, vital intersection of interests, events, loves, likes and dislikes. You are a human being.
I have been watching myself make more work around the initial keyhole studies that I made: the keyholes have taken on layers of meaning over time, becoming portals populating mystical, rural spaces or suggestive openings to unknown rooms, they are signifiers of quiet and peace.
They are guardians of knowledge”
The Exhibition ran for a week in April 2024 and Faye gave a talk about her affection for The Morrab Library, what she unearthed about the space and herself through being one of the recent Artists in Residence which you can watch here. Faye has been running a series of Art Clubs, “art and soul sessions”, at the library.
