WRITING
CAMP X KARST Residency 2026: SARA Kerry
Sara Kerry was the selected artist for CAMP’s residency in partnership with KARST Studios and Gallery in Plymouth. Sara spent two months in KARST’s Studio 2 from the beginning of April to the end of May 2026. Sara has written a blog reflecting on her time in the studio and what she did and made there.
“I dedicated three days a week to looking, sorting, editing and collaging. I brought all my work into KARST and decided not to make anything new for six weeks. Observed choices. Elevated leg. Made notes. Searched through piles of painted paper and countless photographs.”
You can read the full text here.
Image: Untitled (patron saint study) 80 x 40 cm, acrylic and charcoal on paper, 2026.
The Cleaning Artists:
Emily Wing Sum Chung reports on her Experience
on the CAMP Residency 2025
Earlier this year, Emily Chung spent 2 months working between AUP and KARST as she undertook the CAMP AUP X KARST Residency 2025. She has written a reflection on the experience, including the relationship between paid work and art work, cleaning as art and cleaning as work, and painting her work colleagues.
“It struck me after I finished my master’s degree from the Glasgow School of Art. I was suddenly unable to do many the things that I used to do: going into the studio and seeing my friends, staying in halls and accessing to print workshop. I felt I was thrown out of art school. I applied to the cleaning job at GSA for the sake of staying in my comfort zone and got rejected.”
You can read the PDF of Emily’s full text via this link.
camp artist residency with intoBodmin's Spring TraiL 2025
As an eco-photographic artist, my practice continually considers topics such as ecology, botany, hydrology, and environmental activism to bolster solutions to climate and ecological emergencies. With a strong link to water-related environments – the riverine and marine, the inland and the coastal – I collaborate with my natural surroundings to produce artwork that sparks curiosity and conversation. Additionally, I am a part-time PhD researcher exploring how eco-photography can mediate between the plight, and rights, of rivers and humans. When I saw the CAMP and intoBodmin Spring Trail artist’s residency opportunity, with its connection to water and community, it called to me to apply. I didn’t even know Bodmin had wells, and I’ve lived in Cornwall for more than 20 years – I love that the county can always surprise and inspire.
Download Josie’s full reflection in PDF HERE.
CAMP commissioned writer and arts researcher Dr Susan Jones to undertake new research exploring the impact of the pandemic on artists livelihoods.
Jones interviewed artists across the country, including CAMP members in Devon and Cornwall.
“The government and Arts Council England’s exclusive and short-term emergency arts funding schemes for freelancers failed to address visual artists’ livelihood needs and allowed the majority to fall through the cracks.
Evidence from a new qualitative, longitudinal study that surprisingly demonstrates how the lives and artistic prospects of many artists positively improved in pandemic conditions offers clues to the infrastructural shifts needed to honour and sustain the talents and vibrancy of the diverse artists’ constituency in future.”
READ THE TEXT
ABOUT SUSAN JONES
Susan Jones is an independent arts researcher working across creative industries and academia. As Director of a-n The Artists Information Company until 2014 she led realisation by artists of UK-wide initiatives such as Networking Artists’ Networks (NAN) and the Paying artists campaign. Her 2019 doctorate at Manchester Metropolitan University examined the interrelationship between arts policy and artists’ livelihoods.
Writing has been published by Art Review, Arts Professional, Corridor 8, Double Negative, The Guardian, Sluice, TransArtists and a-n The Artists Information Company. Presentations include ‘Finding freedom: artists’ livelihoods in 2021, CAMP; Confronting disturbance: artists’ livelihoods in a Covid world’, The Coast Is Queer, Blackpool; ‘Getting ahead: strategies for artists’ livelihoods’, CVAN Equity Policy Group; ‘Could do better: the exceptional impact of COVID-19 emergency measures on visual artists with chronic conditions’ (with Vishalakshi Roy), Another Artworld: Manifestations and Conditions of Equity in Visual Arts, Belgrade; ‘Artists’ livelihoods: prospects and barriers’, Loughborough University MA Creative Industries and ‘What’s best for artists’ livelihoods?’ University of Huddersfield/Temporary Contemporary.