Artist in Residence Commission
Gee D'Silva creates new work, No. 183, for Middlesbrough Art Week
Gee D’Silva completed her IOU residency in 2024 with her final exhibition ‘No. 182’ presented at the IOU Hostel and as part of our Calderdale Year of Culture Artist Showcase at the Creation Centre.
Since then Gee has been commisioned by Arvon Writing Centres to create their Lumb Bank centre in minature and now to co create a new work for Middlesbrough Art Week
Gee’s creates intricate dioramas using repurposed, fragile materials to explore memory place and belonging. She spends time with local residents recreate domestic spaces weaving light, sound, field recordings, and lived experience into subjective narratives and inviting inquisitive interaction.
No. 1830 by Gee D’Silva & Jessie Marie Butler
This new work explores the meaning of home through the domestic spaces of families who have moved to Middlesbrough from overseas. Intricate, true-to-life dioramas, made from recycled cardboard, clay and found materials, sit alongside stories taken from conversations with the participants. Around them, transparencies and shadows evoke the places that make the area feel like home. Layered sounds from inside the houses fill the space and silhouettes move across the walls. Together, they celebrate belonging, memory and the richness migration brings to the community. The title is both a house number and the year Middlesbrough was founded, when people arrived to build a port from scratch and took a place that didn’t exist yet – as we know it today – and made it their own.
No.182 is presented as part of the Little Boro exhibition – village of shipping containers transformed into a series of creative spaces in Middlesbrough’s Centre Square. The exhibition explores themes of belonging and community in Middlesbrough through the lens of local artists.
‘After meeting Little Boro Creative Lead (and IOU Vice Chair) Stella Hall during my time as IOU Artist in Residence, I was so excited when she reached out to ask if I’d like to be part of a creative container village, during Middlesbrough Art Week.
Not only was this a chance to explore and work with a new community, plus show the piece I made during my residency in a new setting, but also a chance to co-commission my friend and fellow artist Jessie Butler. We worked on No.1830 together; the process of seeing your practice mesh with somebody else’s was a new journey with lots of learning involved too! The most special moment was seeing the families we worked with on this piece’s first look at the work. Going to the Turner Prize after Party and seeing the wealth of creative people and vibrant scene in Middlesbrough was inspiring to say the least!
Seeing mine and Jessie’s side by side, and collaborating on No. 1830, has been the best and a real learning experience.’