Substrate is the first in a series of short residencies hosted by Basic Channel. Hannah Rowan will be the first artist to join us in this programme, which will provide space to research through field trips, site visits and conversations. Her current work explores how processes of transformation, growth, reaction, adaptation, evolution and degradation can alter the natural and material states of our environment. This first iteration of Substrate will include visiting a flooded abandoned limestone quarry where the PH level of the water has risen above the acidity of bleach. Substrate’s core aim is to support open-ended artistic research, without any particular outcome being set. Hannah will join us to discuss her work on our first podcast, whilst the progress of her research undertaken during the residency will unfold on an evolving web platform in the months following. 

Basic Channel aims to provide long-term support and open-ended opportunities to artists, centred around the development of experimental research and opportunities to test out new methods of production and distribution for their work. Substrate understands the needs of each artist individually, through continued conversation, this allows the support the programme offers to adapt alongside the changing requirements of a developing artistic practice. 

Hannah Rowan lives and works in London (UK). She makes sculptural works that meditate on the relationship between the slow geological time of natural processes and the fast-paced, technology-driven, frenetic activity of humans. Utilising synthetic and organic materials in her ephemeral, multifaceted constructions; melting ice suspended from metal armatures, salt piles on horizontal planes, liquid tanks, casts, clay, clamps and cabling are all used to make modular assemblages. She borrows visual language from ecology, geology and chemistry to form fragile and precarious systems that mediate the natural world under a lens of forensic tranquillity.  Her work is informed by research and collaboration in remote environments such as the Atacama Desert and the Arctic.