Plymouth-based artist Benjamin Spicer’s residency at GROW starts on Thursday 2 March 2023 where he’ll be taking partially assembled works formed from projects over the past 5 years and reimagining them into something new. Expect trial and error, partially put together pieces and an ever changing view through the windows of this DIY art space in Plymouth’s Cultural Quarter as you watch the week unfold. Benjamin’s week-long residency culminates in an opening event on Thursday 9 March (5-9pm).
The show is open to the public on Friday 10, Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 between 10-4pm.
‘WORK IN PROGRESS’
Benjamin spent his teenage years in Plymouth after moving around a lot as a younger child, including time in Glasgow (where he was born in 1987), the North of England and overseas. At 18, he left for London to complete a BSc in Fine Art from Byam Shaw School of Art. After graduating, he remained there for 9 years working as an artist, set designer, set builder and fabricator on multiple projects with clients from Vogue to Daz, often to the deadline and specification of others. Benjamin returned to Plymouth five years ago to focus on his own practice and became the prolific and obsessive maker of ‘works in progress’, using material brought, found and borrowed. The issues of the temporal and unfinished are a constant in Benjamin’s practice. During his residency at GROW, he will utilise the empty space of the ground floor to test and play with ideas of transitions and endings and questions the necessity of completion.
PART OF A YEAR-LONG SERIES OF RESIDENCIES AND CULTURAL EVENTS
This event is part of a year-long series of pop-up residencies and cultural events working with partners to experiment and explore the building, its surroundings, heritage and looks to the future in terms of sustainability, inclusion, food and drink, grassroots arts, music and culture. The top floors have recently been converted into studios, which are now creative home to painters, audio artists, printmakers, installation and socially engaged artists