Legacies

This piece of work consists of a large wall hanging that has been constructed with vintage, charity shop salvaged curtains and out-sourced tapestries. When combined they form a patchwork construct which acts as a locator for the nostalgic history that they [could have] embodied. Overlaying the fabric are sports action cards of the British Gold Metal winners from the Athens Olympics, 2004. They embody both the excitement and hope that the Olympics and achievement hold while simultaneously criticising the historically unsuccessful legacy of post Olympic site locations. A sort of bittersweet contrast. Also hanging from the top of the work is a large scroll of (mostly) tabloid newspaper covers from the beginning of the inauguration process for President Trump, and how like (most of these Olympic site locations) embody an unsettling and unknown state of what is to come. A gentle form of resistance in the form of fabric, paper, collage and safety pins. Hopefully safety in numbers will defend our freedom and joyful diversity in the future

I Think I Love you Lounge

Jessica Voorsanger’s I Think I Love You Lounge explores the obsessional love of celebrity. Visitors will be able to dress up as pop stars through the decades selected by Voorsanger including Elvis, Abba, Michael Jackson, the Spice Girls and Beyoncé. Voorsanger's paintings of celebrities are exhibited alongside the costumes

Found

Cornelia Parker invited over 60 fellow artists to join her in exhibiting at the Foundling Museum in London. Titled Found, the show spills out from the basement gallery to infiltrate every room in the building and remind us that, when the Foundling Hospital was set up as a charity for destitute children in 1739, artists made an important contribution. The show was curated by Cornelia Parker, with exhibiting artists including Mona Hatoum, Richard Wentworth, Gavin Turk, and Anthony Gormley. My contribution to the exhibition was a series of objects and correspondence that were located in the rubbish of Bob Geldof in 1994

The Secret to a Good Life

'The Secret to a Good Life' was an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art celebrating the life of the artist Deirdre Borlase. The underlying agenda of the exhibition was to celebrate women artists who have been overshadowed by history, their husbands or purely sexist intolerance. Deirdre Borlase graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1946 and had a prolific career. She is the mother of Bob and Roberta Smith (my husband). Alongside paintings by Deirdre Borlase were 3 large scale collaborative sculptures by Smith, myself and our daughter Etta Voorsanger-Brill. According to Deirdre Borlase "The secret to a good life is to get a good pencil a 2B or 4B. You don't want an HB, those are for architects!" Borlase passed away in July 2018 and did not see the exhibition realised

Processions, Suffragette March, Artichoke Trust & The Turner Contemporary

On the 10th of June 2018, over 100,000 women participated in a celebration of the Suffragettes and the Suffragists in marches across Great Britain. It was a mass participation artwork, which celebrated one hundred years of votes for women. 100 female artists were commissioned by Artichoke Trust and 14-18 NOW to work with organisations and communities across the UK to create banners for Processions. I was commissioned to work with Turner Contemporary to make a banner. Together with 5 students from UCA Canterbury, POW! Thanet (Power of Women) Arts Festival and people from the Margate community I created a large-scale banner that was sewn, painted and embroidered. Each of the participants made a panel, which I put together to represent all of us and the women we were celebrating. We didn’t only create a banner but an entire performance, which included costumes, chants and ringing bells to establish our presence. While many of the banners in the march were amazing ours stood out through our presence, performance, colours and scale. We were featured in several news items on local and national television as well as in newspapers. From my participation in the Processions project, I was later commissioned to create another procession. This one to be the opening event for the POW! Thanet Arts Festival on the 8th of March 2018 International Women’s Day). The procession that I created, led a group of over 250 people from Margate Station to Turner Contemporary. For this commission I worked with several groups in the community to create banners. They included UCA Canterbury, primary and secondary schools, Mencap, Ageless Thanet, the Soropotists, the WASPIs and the Margate WI. After the procession the banners were all exhibited in different locations around Thanet

University for the Creative Arts staff research 2011

This publication brings together a selection of the University’s current research. The contributions foreground areas of research strength including still and moving image research, applied arts and crafts, as well as emerging fields of investigations such as design and architecture. It also maps thematic concerns across disciplinary areas that focus on models and processes of creative practice, value formations and processes of identification through art and artefacts as well as cross-cultural connectivity. Dr. Seymour Roworth-Stoke

The secret to a good life

The Secret to a Good Life was commissioned by the Royal Academy (RA) to mark its 250th anniversary. Authored by Royal Academician, Patrick Brill under his pseudonym Bob and Roberta Smith, the exhibition used the work of his mother and father alongside several new pieces created in collaboration with his wife and daughter that question the historically strained relationships between women and the RA

The art of Jessica Voorsanger

'The Art of Jessica Voorsanger' is a comprehensive monograph of multimedia artist Voorsanger's work, dealing with the subjects of popular culture and celebrity, identity, obsession, escapism, and the changing relationship between the fan and the idol. The book explores a range of her work, from karaoke performances, kitsch installations, paintings and sculpture, with a particular focus on new work emerging from her ongoing project, The Impostor Series. By using humour and parody in The Impostor Series, her work is also able to tackle tough topics including her personal cancer treatment, gender politics, and the discomfort that we can feel as an audience through humour. As a book 'The Art of Jessica Voorsanger 'operates on the same plain as the world she is critiquing, the design itself drawing on celebrity annuals, memories of falling in love with David Cassidy, and a childhood spent celebrity-spotting in New York's Upper East Side. The publication takes on board all of the playfulness, seriousness and vibrance of Voorsanger's work, contributing to the wide-reaching current discussion in society around celebrity in an engaging way. Although she has featured in several publications, this book has particular significance as it is the first specific to her work. The book is edited by Jean Wainwright with contributions from Jean Wainwright, Kathy Kubicki, Louisa Buck, Ralph Rugoff, Emily Druiff and Deborah Robinson

The Final Frontier (Museums at Night)

As part of Connect10, a national scheme to position leading artists in public venues across the UK for 'Museums at Night', Jessica Voorsanger was selected as one of the 10 commissioned artists to create a 'Museums at Night' event at a museum within Britain. Museums across the UK were invited to try to 'win' one of the artists by obtaining the most votes for their preferred artist from the general public. 20-21 Visual Arts Centre in Scunthorpe won the national competition to win Jessica Voorsanger and hosted a Museums at Night Event in 2014 with a sci-fi twist. Jessica Voorsanger presented The Final Frontier, a unique one-night-only art event which featured Sci-fi Karaoke, Doctor Who Life Drawing, A Trouble with Tribbles Experience, a Men in Black Parade and more. It was an evening that saw 20-21 transformed into a sci-fi fans paradise

Family Art Project

‘The Family Art Project’ consists of four artists, Vorsanger, Bob & Roberta Smith, and their children Etta (age 11) and Fergal (age 6). They have, working as a collaborative team, created art events in Germany, England, Finland and China, often using the process of an interactive workshop environment within a gallery space creating collaborative pieces with the visitors, exploring subject areas that relate to their individual areas of research. In the ‘Family Art Project in China, Artists Links’ Residency the boundaries of interactive family projects, their previous practice together and the contribution of children's input was explored in ways unorchestrated by adult agendas. Funded by the British Council and the Arts Council England the residency (including stipend, flat and studio) collaborative drawings/paintings and films were shown in the exhibition ‘Forward/Backward & Reloading’ at Island6 Arts Center in Shanghai in August 2006. The project explored the relationship of 'children and the state', examining areas such as 'the one child policy' and the rights of migrant workers’ children. Through a daylong event at Island 6 Arts Space they initiated the process of linking an independently run school for the children of migrant workers in Pudong, a suburb of Shanghai, and an intercity school in East London. There were several areas of commonality for the children i.e. location within the suburbs, large numbers of immigrants within the student body, assortments of dialects and languages spoken and the forthcoming Olympics. Voorsanger was one of four speakers presenting projects to the delegates of the conference ‘Artist Links in China & Brazil’ in October 2006 at the Barbican Centre. There were over 60 artists who created artworks from their Artist Links residencies and the project was documented in both the catalogue for the exhibition and the Artists Links 2002-06 book published by the British Council