Education

  • Conditions Studio Programme, 2021 - 2022
  • Goldsmiths University, 2018 - 2021, BA Fine Art
  • Kingston School of Art, 2017 - 2018, Art & Design Foundation

Residencies


Selected Exhibitions

  • SOS_23 WIP Exhibition, South London Gallery, 2023
  • Means, Bermondsey Project Space, 2023
  • 3D Women Platform, Art Hub, 2023
  • Doing Better With Worse, Ugly Duck Gallery, 2023
  • Conditions Show, Whitgift Centre, 2022
  • -topia, Bermondsey Project Space, 2022
  • I Know a Guy..., Art Hub, 2022
  • Deep Meaningful Conversation, Ugly Duck Gallery, 2022

Publications & Writing

  • Image Permission, edited with Christopher Bond, Exhibition text for Means at Bermondsey Project Space, 2023
  • A Particular Reality (APR): Developing a Nuanced Pedagogical Methodology within Practice-Based Higher Education Courses, co-authored with Michelle Williams Gamaker and APR, in De-/Anti-/Post-colonial Feminisms in Contemporary Art and Textile Crafts, edited by Katy Deepwell, 2023
  • Deep Meaningful Conversation, edited by Hugo Hagger and Babette Whiting, 2022

Workshops, Events & Projects

  • Young Archivists, Croydon Archives, 2024
  • Woven Together, St Saviours CE and St Paul with St Luke Primary Schools
  • Family Archive & Village Green talk, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2023
  • We regret to inform you!, 3D Women Platform, 2023
  • Another Art School is Possible, A Particular Reality, Goldsmiths CCA, 2023
  • Reimagining Crits, A Particular Reality, 2023
  • Rights in Focus Conference, Autograph, South London Gallery & UAL, 2023
  • Early Years Creativity Project, Bow Arts & Dagenham Nursery Consortium, 2023
  • Art School, Backwards, A Particular Reality & Kingston School of Art, 2023
  • Harsh Light, Bloc Projects, 2022
  • Souvenir/Collection/Archive, Goldsmiths CCA, 2022
  • Shifting the Margins, Goldsmiths Teaching and Learning Innovation Centre, 2022
  • What does an anti-racist classroom look like?, Thomas Tallis School, 2022
  • Mark Leckey invites Conditions, NTS Radio, 2021

Awards




Francesca Telling is an interdisciplinary artist, facilitator and learning practitioner.

Francesca’s practice investigates how the social histories of displaced communities are seen in objects and images. She uses sculpture, photography, writing and time-based media to explore the grief embedded in migration narratives - asking what it means to collect things in the context of survival and assimilation, and how this is recorded. Her works draw inspiration from arrangements of gathered ephemera found in migrant homes, bringing together materials which complicate the space between the formal archives preserved by institutions, and informal archives assembled by families. Situating herself amongst entanglements of intergenerational memory and systemic erasure, she evokes the archival applications of care, stewardship and storytelling - to question what tangible and loving forms of representation can exist for those voided of the means for documentation.

Francesca’s facilitation practice focusses on redressing structural inequalities in education, through collaboration with children and young people. Her work is locally-responsive and informed by anti-racist approaches, usually emerging in combinations of dialogue and participatory documentation. She is currently working on pedagogical projects in the heritage sector, engaging racially minoritised young people in museums and archives. Here she aims to explore power, space and time at the sites of historical knowledge generation - activating the past in the imagining of more just futures.

Francesca is currently supported by Grand Plan Fund to develop a project exploring oral histories and diasporic labour across London’s archive sector.