OCA Fine Art: Student Stories – Shirry Insole

Fine Art Programme Tutor, Hayley Lock, discusses the student journey so far with Shirry Insole, a student on the BA Fine Art degree who has just completed the second unit, 2.2 Experimental Encounters, the second Level 2 course unit designed around collaboration and working with others. 

Unit 2.2 is made up of ten projects where collaborative working and its associated theories help develop and underpin an often new area of creative exploration, which shapes itself into a more knowledgeable space around the documentation and recognition of working with or alongside others. Students at this stage in their learning often continue and expand a more professional, perhaps public facing creative approach to making, that gives voice to what their work concerns in a way that gives meaning and coherence for others.

Tutor Hayley Lock was intrigued to see that when Shirry started this unit she had already applied for and been successfully invited to join the Artist-in-Residence programme at the Caetani Cultural Centre in Vernon, Canada and discussed this in more detail with Shirry at their first tutorial in August 2025. Hayley looks back at this unit with Shirry and discusses the highlights and sometimes sticky areas that come with collaborative practice that has since opened up new professional relationships as well as other future professional possibilities.

Hayley Lock (HL): Shirry, as your tutor for this unit I have watched your confidence grow in what was a completely new area of focus within your degree pathway. I was initially under the impression that you were confident in applying for opportunities such as outside residencies within your practice and was slightly taken back when you explained that you had never applied for anything like it before. Can you explain how you came about applying for this residency and what your feelings were when everything aligned and you were offered this very exciting opportunity?

Shirry Insole (SI): Honestly, I hadn’t applied for any residencies before, so it was completely new territory for me. My curiosity led me to applying to this particular residency. At the same time, I realised that this residency would be a perfect opportunity to incorporate my upcoming unit on collaboration, giving me a real context to explore themes related to lived experience. When I found out I was accepted, I was thrilled but also a little nervous, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Mostly, I was excited to immerse myself in the space, engage with its history, and see how it could shape my work, while also experimenting with collaboration in a way I hadn’t before. 

HL: Can you explain a little more about the Caetani Cultural Centre and why this residency opportunity was of interest to you?

SI: The Caetani Cultural Centre has a really interesting and somewhat mysterious history. I actually stumbled upon it by chance during one of my weekly sketching sessions. The house once belonged to an Italian nobleman who had renounced his title and moved to Vernon with his partner/wife and their young daughter, Sveva. After his death in 1935, his wife Ofelia struggled to adapt to life in Canada and, while dealing with mental illness, imposed a ridiculous confinement on herself, her daughter, and their companion, Miss Juul. They then lived in isolation in the house for 25 years, which ended with Ofelia’s death. What fascinated me most was Sveva’s story. She re-entered society in her forties with very little life experience, eventually studying art and creating a significant body of work later in life. That raised many questions for me, especially about women’s lived experience in confinement, Sveva’s resilience, and about why her work remained relatively overlooked for so long. While talking with the staff at the centre, our conversation moved into topics like mental health and the historical position of women artists. Around that time, I also learned they offered an artist-in-residence programme for emerging artists, and I was encouraged to apply. The residency felt like a natural extension of my research into space and lived experience, which I started in 2.1. I was interested in exploring the phenomenological aspects of the house, how space holds memory, and how the experiences of the women who lived there might resonate through contemporary artistic practice. I was also curious about Sveva’s resilience and how making art may have helped her make sense of such an unusual life. I somehow knew that this residence experience could be extended into 2.2 collaborative project. However, at the time, I did not know how, nor could I imagine how it would become such a pivotal experience for me, particularly in shaping my work in Unit 2.2, and influencing my broader artistic practice.

HL: I understand that you worked with a number of different people throughout this whole experience. How hard was it to operate as part of a collective alongside the expectations of this unit as well as with the cultural centre itself? Did you have to be strategic at all to make things happen?

SI: Honestly, I didn’t really know what to expect going into the residency because it was my first one. I had an initial idea for collaboration with some external contributors, but that plan didn’t quite work out. Mostly it was because they hadn’t anticipated the amount of work involved, and they weren’t particularly interested in the academic requirements that came with my unit. What ended up happening instead was much more organic. Being in residence meant I was constantly in conversation with other artists and writers, and many of us were drawn to the same thing, the unusual and layered history of the Caetani House. Those shared interests naturally sparked creative exchanges, and a form of collaboration began to develop through those conversations and responses to the site. The Caetani Cultural Centre was also very supportive. They helped guide me toward historical archival materials and allowed access to the grounds so I could experiment with natural materials for my work. Toward the end of the residency, they even offered me the empty gallery space to hang my work and test how it might function as an exhibition, which was incredibly helpful. I wouldn’t say I had a specific strategy for collaboration or for “making things happen”. I tend to let things unfold and stay open to opportunities. One important lesson I learned was that collaboration doesn’t always mean equal or symmetrical contribution. Because the project was generated from my research and themes, I realised it was okay for my voice to remain central while still welcoming responses from others. Over time, I also began to rethink what collaboration could mean. It wasn’t only about working with other people. In many ways, we were all collaborating with the site itself, its history, its archival traces, and even the natural materials from the grounds. That shifted my understanding of collaboration into something broader and more fluid. 

HL: How do you think this experience expanded your knowledge around collaboration and what do you think were the main takeaways from it, in relation to your creative and professional facing practice?

SI: This experience really expanded my understanding of what collaboration can look like. For starters, it is no longer intimidating. I thought collaboration meant a very structured process, in which people worked together in a clearly defined way toward a shared and predetermined outcome. What I discovered during the residency and the course unit was something much more fluid. The collaboration often happened through conversations, shared reflections, and responding to the same place and history from different perspectives. In some ways, “working together” became more like “working through” something together. The history of the Caetani House carries a lot of emotional weight, and many of us found ourselves confronting different kinds of personal reflections while engaging with the site. It felt as if we were each encountering our own “ghosts” through the process of making work. I also learned how valuable it is simply to be around other artists. Seeing their discipline, their ways of interpreting things, and how they approach their own practices was incredibly enriching. Those exchanges naturally influence how I think about my own work. I often think of Louise Bourgeois’ phrase, “I do, I undo, I redo”. That cycle feels very true to artistic practice, it is through making, each of us finds ways to process our past and make sense of experience. In that way, this collaboration created a space where individual processes could exist alongside one another, forming a kind of collective reflection through art. Professionally, this experience also made me think more carefully about the role of the audience. I hope our work creates a space for others to pause and reflect on their own experiences. Viewers may find themselves confronting memories, questions, or what I sometimes think of as their own “ghosts”. If the work can open that kind of reflective space, then the collaboration has extended beyond the artists themselves to include the audience as well. 

HL: It would be great if you could share some images of the work you made and how this came together in a group show. Would you be happy to share these at this point and expand a little on your thinking in terms of making work that often appears to me quite ephemeral, transitory even? I think this would be of great interest to others reading this post.

SI: A lot of my work grows out of my research interests in phenomenology, memory, and the tension between absence and presence. More recently I’ve been incorporating concepts related to material agency and what some scholars refer to as “mad epistemology” This focus highlights the ways of knowing that emerge from experiences often excluded from dominant narratives. Philosophically, some of my early guideposts came from reading Jacques Derrida, particularly his writing about the “non-present presence, and of a being-there of an absence”. Those ideas really resonated with me and became a kind of visual compass for how I approach the visual aesthetics for this work. The process of making becomes a way of slowly bringing those fragments into material form.

You can find further details in my 2.2 blog post: Shirry Insole – Fine Art 2.2: Experimental Encounters FA5EES. 

Figure 1 – 5: Shirry Insole, T(here), 2025, Mixed media on rice paper, 15 x21 cm (series of five) depicts faint female forms suspended between presence and absence. The fragility of the material echoes conditions of isolation, while the persistence of the image suggests resilience. T(here) reflects on seeing and being seen, offering an intimate space for contemplation. 

The theme of this project involves memory, loss, and the traces of lived experience, the works take on a fragile or ephemeral quality. I am drawn to materials like rice paper, natural pigments, and plant processes because they carry a sense of vulnerability and impermanence. In the Caetani work titled T(here), for example, the figures are often only partially visible, present, but not fully defined. In a way, they are seen but not entirely seeing, which reflects that tension between presence and absence. The ephemeral quality is part of how I try to hold space for what cannot be fully recovered or explained, but can still be felt through the act of looking. I was invited to participate in the group show which features artists whose work is inspired by Sveva Caetani. The group show opens next week. My series T(here) will be curated as an installation so that viewers can move through the space, engaging with the fragile and ephemeral qualities of the materials and imagery. The installation aims to create an intimate dialogue with the history of the house and its former residents.

HL: I understand that after this residency there are more things in the pipeline creatively for you? Would you be happy to expand on this in more detail?

SI: Yes, this residency has definitely opened up a number of things creatively for me. In many ways it has brought me into the local artist conversation in a way I didn’t quite anticipate. I’ve been invited to take part in a group exhibition at the Caetani Gallery featuring artists whose work has been inspired by Sveva Caetani, which feels like a meaningful continuation of the research I began during the residency. There are also plans for an exhibition later this fall that will present the collaborative work developed through this project. I’m currently exploring the curation ideas for this work, which is a new creative territory for me as I experiment with ways to create narrative through installation. Unit 2.2 really helped me think more clearly about how to structure collaboration and gave me a framework to better articulate the ideas behind the project. Through the connections I made during the residency, a few of us have also started developing a new initiative called Women Speak: 365 Collaged Voices. The project aims to bring together women’s voices through collage and collective documentation, exploring more nonlinear ways of recording knowledge and lived experience. Beyond that, I’ve begun applying for additional residencies and grants to continue expanding this line of work. Interestingly, the experience has also encouraged me to venture into writing about art. I recently had a piece published in a local newspaper reflecting on a contemporary exhibition. Overall, this unit has felt like a real period of growth for me. It pushed me to think more critically about my practice, but it also gave me more confidence to share my work publicly and to pursue opportunities that I might not have considered before.

HL: Thank you, Shirry, it’s been a delight to read more of your reflections on how important this unit was for you both creatively, practically and professionally. If you have any more information about future professional development in the field of fine art, do feel free to share with me so that I can share with others. For me the volume of work that you undertook was invaluable and your organisational skills around getting things to happen, the documentation of the processes and ongoing events and of course the collaboration itself was hugely successful. Well done, it pays perhaps to be a little brave and see what the possibilities are out there.

SI: Thank you so much for your kind words. I really appreciate the encouragement and support throughout the unit. It was definitely a challenging process at times, but also a very rewarding one. This experience has given me a lot more confidence in how I approach my practice. I should also say that your guidance throughout the unit played an important role in pushing me to go a bit further than I might have otherwise. You helped point me toward ways of structuring and articulating the project that I hadn’t fully considered at the start, and that has made a lasting impact on how I think about my practice. I’ll certainly keep you updated if there are further developments. Thank you again for taking the time to put together this conversation and for your continued support. 

If anyone would like to follow my ongoing work and projects, you can find me on instagram: @Shirry_Insole_art