Caroline Bagenal
GAR Environmental/Installation Artist: Caroline Bagenal
The Environmental/Installation artist (E/IA) is selected via jury and receives a stipend for the month-long residency, typically held in September. Artists are encouraged to work outdoors and develop their ideas and concepts pertaining to the region concurrently working on a “site-specific” installation located at the Ocean Alliance Center on Rocky Neck. This residency has made art both visible and accessible to the public. Artists are encouraged to engage the public and draw attention to questions and challenges posed by environmental policies, politics, and/or social change.
We are pleased to welcome Caroline Bagenal as the 2024 Environmental/Installation Artist for the Goetemann Artist Residency in collaboration with the Ocean Alliance.
My work is inspired by the world around me, particularly the marsh landscape around Newburyport. Though I trained as a painter, I am now primarily a sculptor working on indoor and outdoor projects. The marsh reed phragmites, became my primary material from which I constructed structures inspired by bird blinds, fish traps, fences, haystacks, and Polynesian stick charts. During the pandemic I made a film about the marsh, documenting how the marsh changed over the course of the year. In August 2021 l fell off my bike and broke both arms and jaw. Swimming outdoors became an important element in my recovery and the origin of my new work. Feed from gravity my body becomes a receptor with heightened senses and, for a time, just another being in the ecosystem of the river. In 2022 I made my first swimming sculptures from recycled nets. The next year I made larger swimming sculptures from recycled woven plastic, bubble wrap and other materials that float. My sculptures derive in part from embroidered photographs which function as a kind of drawing with thread which I use to imagine future sculptures. For the Goetemann Residency, I intend to continue the swimming sculpture project taking it in new directions. I plan to make a film using drones to better convey the idea of the swimmer as part of a vast ocean environment. Future swimming sculptures could be made from materials found on the seashore. I will continue to use embroidery on photographs to explore ideas. My father was a marine biologist. While going through his books and papers I decided to use some of his research for my project in part as a homage to him.
Caroline Bagenal was born in Scotland and lives in Newburyport, MA, and Cumbria in the UK. She has an MFA in Painting and an MA in Modern Art History, Theory and Criticism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been shown widely in both the UK and USA including The Maritime Museum in Liverpool and OIA Gallery, New York. Her work has been reviewed in Boston Art Review, Sculpture Magazine, The Boston Globe, Art New England, Artscope and other publications and is included in both private and corporate collections. She has received numerous awards and artists residencies, most recently in 2023 at Cove Park, Scotland. She was an Associate Professor at Montserrat College of Art for twenty-five years.
Caroline’s Website: carolinebagenal.com