OPINION
Jane and Louise Wilson: “Having space to nurture a practice is really important” British artists Jane and Louise Wilson began working collaboratively in the late 1980s when studying at different art colleges in Newcastle and Dundee. Nominated for the 1999 Turner Prize, the Newcastle-born twins are known for their moving image and photographic works that deal with place, history and ideology in always compelling, often unsettling ways. They share their experience of art education, both as students and teachers, with Jack Hutchinson.
1
Jane and Louise Wilson, Gapado Island, South Korea, 2018. Courtesy: the artists.
What was life like as undergraduate students? Jane Wilson: We both studied separate undergraduate degrees, with Louise at Duncan of Jordanstone College in Dundee, while I was at Newcastle Polytechnic [now Northumbria University]. The BA was an important time for me. Newcastle was fantastic, including the students and teaching style. We had a lot of facilities there, including media production, that were open across fine art. So, there was painting, sculpture and printmaking, but having access to media production meant we could also make large-scale, 5ft by 5ft photographic works. We got these garden troughs and had a process to develop this large resin-coated paper. It was a really productive time, but it was the final year that we started working in earnest as a collaboration. Up until that point we hadn’t made it very public, but when we were approaching our degree shows I had a tutorial with one of my tutors and she said you are going to have to produce identical shows, which is what we did. 5
