Art in Context: Working Away – A lecture by Sue Hunt

 An exploration of working as an artist in an international community context

Mothers of Africa is a Charity Organisation that aims to lower the amount of Mothers dying in Child birth and the amount of babies losing their lives in Africa. Sue Hunt went out to Zambia to create artwork with a community that supported the work of the charity organisation. She went to explore ways of making visual work with local artists and villagers, maybe giving them a voice, empowering them and helping them to express their needs visually.

Within this Lecture, we were shown images of what resources in Zambia are like. We thought about how community artwork can be hampered by social context. For example, they has no art materials and had to source them for projects. Art can be used in this sense to bring communities together and get people conversing that usually would not interact with one another.

Art was not often taught in schools in Zambia and so it was welcomed with open arms. Sue Hunt and a team of people ran workshops for the Zambian adults and children like Cyanotype, photography projects and they all made murals together. Works were then framed and displayed in the hospital where the mothers of africa charity comes into play. They were there for all to view, to lift spirits and make the bear walls more appealing. They also got villagers to write down messages of what was wanted and needed within the village and hospital to produce work from.

This lecture was a prime example of the role of the artist bringing communities together achieveing the lifting of spirits and encouraging change. This has inspired me to think about how I could maybe work with communities in the future and work on art based projects.

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