Andrew Ranville
London, England
Residency: April-May 2016
Artist Statement:
My arts practice is largely project-based with location, landscape, and the artwork itself determining the medium. My installations, sculptures, film, photographs, recordings and prints investigate a variety of interests including architecture, environment, field science, cartography, and community. When a viewer encounters my work, I hope to provide the recognition of a new path, vantage point, surface, or space. The balance between the formal and functional aspects of the work often elicit those interactions. I convey these ideas using ecologically sensitive methods which emphasize notions of revitalization and resilience.
About the Artist:
Andrew Ranville, born 1981 in Michigan, USA; lives and works in London, United Kingdom since 2006; and more recently, between London and Michigan since 2015. Ranville received his MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2008.
In April of 2015, Ranville was commissioned by the CREES Foundation to be Community Innovator at their Manu Learning Center located in the Peruvian Amazon. His initial visit investigated the center’s physical infrastructure as well as conceptual framework. Ranville’s research, architectural installations, and artwork will help catalyze the next stage in the foundation’s community philosophy. From August to December in 2015 Ranville was awarded the Barstow Artist-in-Residence position at Central Michigan University, where he mentored a variety of students, including BFA candidates. He organized several workshops and field trips, including two short expeditions: one to a small mountain overlook and island in Lake Superior; and another down a length of the Chippewa River, collaborating with a team of biologists to gather and measure scientific samples along the journey.
In the spring of 2014, Ranville was invited to be a TBA21 Academy Fellow and take part in the Treasure of Lima buried exhibition. As a expedition member to the remote Cocos Island, Ranville donated an artwork to a contemporary treasure chest which he then helped bury on the island. A duplicate chest with encrypted map was sold at auction to raise money for conservation and the study of pelagic species around island, which is a National Park of Costa Rica and an UNESCO World Heritage Site.
From 2010-2013 Ranville co-founded and developed the Rabbit Island Artist Residency program, periodically living and working on the remote, 90-acre island located in Lake Superior. As the residency’s founding artist, he created work for the program’s inaugural exhibition, No Island is a Man, in partnership with the DeVos Art Museum at Northern Michigan University, where he also spoke. A catalogue and limited-edition artifact kit was published in conjunction with the exhibition. Today the residency is a fully-funded international program and exhibition series. Recently awarded non-profit status, Ranville works as the residency administrator and is the Executive Director of the Rabbit Island Foundation.
In 2012 Ranville exhibited at the 4th Marrakech Biennale in Morocco. His Seven Summits project involved summiting the seven mountains over 4000 meters in the Western High Atlas range. He extracted a stone from the absolute peak of each mountain and transported them to Marrakech to be presented as part of a large architectural installation. This temporary installation – made from locally-sourced Atlas Cedar – was created and displayed on the roof of the Théâtre Royal. The trek to the summits was repeated in June of 2012, wherein Ranville restored the stones to their exact original locations.
In 2011 Ranville received a commission from the UK’s Forestry Commission to propose a large-scale sculptural installation for the Lake District’s Grizedale Forest in England. In addition to the explorations, research and workshops carried out in the forest itself, Ranville has participated in a group exhibition and several symposia hosted by the Forestry Commission.
Ranville’s work has been exhibited internationally and installations of his work can be found – or have been shown in – countries including Australia, China, Finland, Morocco, Spain, Costa Rica, UK and the USA. His work has been published in various art magazines and journals. He has lectured and delivered talks at various universities in the United Kingdom and United States.