The Old Schoolhouse Project Space Residency: Participant Announcement

We are pleased to announce that Francesca Pease has been selected to take part in the upcoming project space residency The Old Schoolhouse.

Based in Cornwall, with a practice centring on psychiatric illness, Francesca Pease works across drawing, printmaking and installation. Rooted in autoethnography, her practice considers how institutional, historical and cultural frameworks shape understandings of illness, examining systems of control, surveillance and power embedded within treatment, diagnosis, and representation.

Her practice explores the limitations of language and visual systems in fully articulating trauma and subjectivity, considering how alternative forms of knowledge- such as relational, material, lived and embodied knowledges- might emerge through her processes.

Driven by material experimentation, she explores the entanglement of play and vulnerability, order and disorder. Her work often incorporates found or discarded materials, drawing on sources including hospital records, microscopy, landscape, and embodied memory.

She invites reflection on the complexities of mental health and trauma, aiming to create space to expand understandings of illness. She is interested in the intersection of art and medicine, exploring the many subjective facets of health, contributing to the field of medical humanities.

We are really looking forward to seeing what Francesca does with her time at The Old Schoolhouse!

Images of work by Francesca Pease – from top to bottom: Little Meaningful Progress, For the Patient’s Safety, Pinned