My creative practice is deeply rooted in drawing and the forming of numerous representations of urban environments. I also create sculptures and installations from found materials which are extensions of the ideas that inform my two dimensional based pieces.

The project, based in one of the most deprived wards in the country is aimed at a wide range diverse audience, reached through talks, workshops, action research and an exhibition whilst providing an ongoing legacy for my work as an artist and for all partners involved.

"A Place In-Between" aims to explore Margate’s past, present and future. The project’s purpose is to celebrate and reinforce connections in local communities, between different parts of town, between the land and the sea, between ourselves and our environment. A research based project, focusing on the British seaside history from a perspective of an outsider: a Polish born lesbian artist living and working in London (my hometown). I will be working with two locations: Arlington house, the eighteen-storey residential apartment block in Margate built in 1964 and Cliftonville 1920’s seafront Lido, the cream coloured Art Deco Complex, closed for over 30 years. Working with ‘the street’, the community and the urban/rural/seafront environment. I am interested in the architecture, the stories, the history, the myths and what links the two locations. The living and functioning tower block vs the poetic ghostly Lido associated with leisure, sport and entertainment (once used as a disco before it finally shut down in the 1980s). The ghost of what once has been.

This is a research based project dealing with issues critical to the experience of contemporary life, the changing character of Margate town, the pandemic, the history and its regeneration.

By showing engagement with these environments, I will transform these unfamiliar surroundings and challenge the established perception of the everyday. Cutting and rearranging my materials to make a sculptural installation, drawings and collage and research recordings, which find beauty in what we overlook or throw away. My aim is to reflect on my passion for the built environment as well as the life that pulses within the streets. Constructed from inexpensive, low-grade materials such as cardboard, fabric, wood, polystyrene, plaster and concrete, combining elements of past with the present history, I will create objects that oscillate between the public and the private, the troublingly personal and the unsettlingly familiar. The final installation aims to demonstrate an affinity for architecture, fragility of our existence and how cities and towns intervene in personal identity.

The exhibition will be on display for a month at The Margate School and it will be available on line via the Margate School and my art websites. There will be an accompanying leaflet publication with the extracts of my research, artist's talk, workshops and the final exhibition images.

Timescale.

January 2021: Research

February - May 2021: Studio practice, artwork production, research edit, artist's talk and workshops.

May 2021: Final exhibition.

https://ankadabrowskaart.com/

https://www.themargateschool.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bylqxP3d02w&feature=emb_logo

https://artuk.org/discover/artists/dabrowska-anka-b-1979