The Professional Guidance Department is delighted to welcome Ruby Bateman, OG (HC 2013) and Mary Gatenby, OG (V 2015), who will be presenting a virtual talk which is open to our state school and community partners, as well as the whole St Swithun's community.  
 

Art and Fine Art

Ruby Bateman (Biography):

Ruby Bateman is an MA Print graduate from the Royal College of Art (2020) and holds a first BA (hons) degree from the University of Brighton (2017) and a Foundation Diploma from Falmouth University (2014).  Ruby has exhibited across the UK and has adapted to the COVID-19 crisis by exhibiting online and participating in online collaborations, including: ‘And Female…’ (2020) and ‘Want To Collaborate But Don’t Want To Touch’ Forced Collaboration (2020).  She has interned for social-political arts causes such as Big Arts Herstory Project (2019) and Birth Rites Collection (2019), something she is deeply passionate about and has since been shortlisted for BRC's 2020 new works (2020).  Ruby teaches creative workshops around London for arts and corporate clientele including Blue Shop Cottage Gallery (2020), Peckham Craft Show (2019), WeWork (2019-2020) and University of Brighton (2018).  She prides herself on contributing to a wider participation in the arts. 

Ruby Bateman (Artist Statement):

I am a London based visual artist working in an expanded print practice. For a long time I have been indirectly making work about my maternal relationships. Now using super 8 film, choreography, sculpture and the body, I am beginning to express a deeper maternal consciousness. 

Adrienne Rich's writing first taught me that motherhood can be a means for patriarchy to limit, pervert and oppress woman's maternal power and knowledge. Reading feminist theories exposed me to violent and compelling modes of language in their investigation of institutionalised motherhood. This kind of rhetoric initiated a deep mistrust and ambivalence for the maternal experience which love and loss had previously led me to desire. 

I refer to my sculptures as 'mother/child stand-ins'. The (dis)connections and gestures I express with them on film reflects how my personal and political relationships with 'the mother' intersect. Filming on super 8 has been transformative for me. Working in an old motion picture medium has allowed me to create visual codes, narrative and style, integral to situating myself within the feminist maternal discourse. 

Mary Gatenby (Biography):

Mary studied a Foundation Diploma in Art and Design at Camberwell College of Art in 2015, before starting a Fine Art BFA at Oxford University in 2016, where she was a recipient of the Kalu Wind Essay Prize in 2017 and a St Edmund Hall college scholar.  After graduating she worked in the Christie’s Archive and at Tate Ward Auctions in their Urban and Contemporary Art Department. 

Her recent exhibitions include Object Relations at the Low Profile Studio (2020), The Festival of Quilts at Alexander Palace (2020) and the Sequestered Art Prize at Tristan Hoare Gallery (shortlist 2021).

In October she began an MA in Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art, studying on the special option Documentary Reborn: Photography, Film and Video in Global Contemporary Art.  As a result of her research in war art, she spoke at the UNESCO conference Another Artworld: Manifestations and Conditions of Equity in the Visual Arts on the relationship between NGOs and the Iraqi art market in December 2020.