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Residency feedback:
‘My week at Level Centre has been a delight. The opportunity to have been granted the means, space and setting to reconnect to my place-based research has been invaluable for the development of my practice and I only wish I had longer here!
I have spent my days exploring the local vicinity, photographing and responding to aspects of the social, natural and built environment. Coming from an active research background in rurality, placeless-ness and natural systems I have used the residency
to ask myself the question: How can we both find and lose ourselves in a place?
I have explored on foot, believing that the truths of somewhere are often found in the everyday assemblages that somehow represent more than the sum of their parts.
People are always present within places and my work, but often only in the forms of what they leave behind. I visited local recycling centres and junk shops along with agricultural warehouses and industrial sites scavenging for materials and stories to
inform my ongoing research practice.
I am leaving with a sense of moving forward and a ‘postcard’ of found objects, written reflections and drawings in response to the Derbyshire countryside. Level Centre were the most friendly and welcoming folk, who seemed to have an in-depth respect and understanding of what it is that artists need and were expert in facilitating that.
I cannot thank everybody enough for their invitation and investment into my practice at the crucial time. I can’t wait to see what grows from the seeds that have been planted and I very much hope that we cross paths again soon.’
Maya Rose Edwards
Maya is a visual artist working across all media in research-based collaborations, fieldwork, site specific intervention, live art, sculpture and participatory encounters to foster a sense of reflection and resistance. Since graduating from The Glasgow School of Art in 2021, they have developed a reputation for producing ambitious public participatory artworks that focus the politics of place, rural culture, acts of landmarking, and queer ecologies. Their work centres forgotten, or disadvantaged sites to re-envision a sense of place and community – often in collaboration with unexpected public audiences, such as farmers, foresters, stonemasons, and sailors.
Maya says: “During my short residency at Level Centre, I’ll be using my time to creatively research a sense of rural placemaking in the area. I am drawn to rural culture and its ability to engage communities with their landscapes. My work often interrogates a belief that agriculture and industry are an extension to the legacy of land art, viewing this as a sculptural form of protest. I am looking forward to responding to the social, natural and built environment whilst collecting material to inform my ongoing sculptural practice.”