About

Statement

While I work within the traditions and parameters of experimental, documentary and structural film, and the three landscape genres, my practice can be thought of as a process of radical documentary. My formative years were spent studying science and then painting in Toronto and London and my artistic project has naturally inclined to materiality and presence and the function of artworks in the online space. The way in which the body is positioned in the landscape is affective and of the moment and much of my work documents paths in public green space using photography, video and installation. While presence is at the centre of my artistic project rather than using the body metaphorically or representing it, I document the landscape in its actuality in the experience of material and process, durations and affects.

My practice draws on structural film strategies, including a quasi-mechanical process of walking, and the image draws attention to itself as unstable. In the walking videos, the walking movement is what defines the form of the work. In this sense the frame, conceptualised as links between transition and movement, is at the centre of my enquiry and interruption to consumption is part of the process of making the work. My borrowed phrase, the ideas and associations that are described in my works, comes from Victor Burgin’s discussion on the politics of the daydream as process where you rarely arrive where you intended (Between, 2020). The practice progresses from the impulse to attend to ideas and associations that structure the material landscape. Interruption shows the other side of materiality, through a series of encounters between image and actuality, disallowing representation, as a form of resistance to the processes of distribution and monetisation in the material and virtual landscapes.

Bio

‘we learn to interpret the conversations associated with photography, cinema, painting, street signs and so on,’ and our knowledge of these systems ’lead us to believe that the world is a fixed and orderly place’ (Lingwood quoted in Kester, Rachel Whitread’s House, 1995).  

When I was a girl, my family moved from Toronto, a city in the middle of a continent, to a rural island in the Caribbean Sea. Mixed in with my astonishment at the clichéd truth of the velvety heat of the scented tropical air, was my awareness of the unfamiliar design of street lighting. Although I was young, this move away from a place I understood as my world brought into view for me the constructedness of my reality. My understanding of television also changed and what had been for me a form of entertainment became a way to communicate. My mother’s informational puppet show, she was in public health then, was broadcast daily. The puppets could be found in the opening time slot of the TV channel of this island, which broadcast during after school hours. Later my school selected me and other girls to play the pirates for a television commercial promoting Birds Eye ready-made food for children, which was also broadcast in the UK. This experience highlighted for me the role of the landscape within the potential of moving image. Subsequently back in Toronto, I studied painting at OCA(DU) and then in Florence, Italy. Later, I moved to London and studied printmaking and painting at The Slade School of Fine Art. I have exhibited in London and elsewhere, and my work was held at the EAgle Gallery, Emma Hill Fine Art, for many years.

I recently passed my final PhD exam in the Fine Art programme at the Royal College of Art in London. As a PhD researcher at RCA, I (re)consider the landscape, the nature of site and conversations associated with media, in the contexts of art practice. In order to disseminate my practice-based research in the context of academic publishing, research, and the online dimension, I worked towards developing an online academic journal supportive of research practice. I am a founding editor on a team that is continuing to develop an online academic research journal, itinerant space. Issue 2: iterations was published in July 2024 and now, a new issue is in the works for next academic year. In April 2025, the UKCGE Conference on practice-based research was hosted by RCA. I, along with the other editors, led a workshop as a way to describe our journal: the journal both exemplifies and publishes practice-based research. We used material shapes and keywords, to open out a debate and avoid ‘siloing’ ideas.

Find out more ➡️ itinerant-space.co.uk

instagram: @kmbosy LinkedIn: K M Bosy

Orcid Number

We welcome expressions of interest from research students, from all the Schools at RCA, who are interested in helping with peer review. Contact the editors

itinerant space: a journal of art, design and communication research practices is an experimental online platform for doctoral researchers. Issue 2 builds on the learning of the pilot issue to iteratively develop an expanded network of the RCA’s wider doctoral research community, and to stretch beyond the academy. As an experimental platform, the journal offers a unique opportunity to inform interdisciplinary conversations and modes of research dissemination.

Founding editors: Nick Bell, Karen Bosy, Kirsty Smith. Editors, Issue 2: Nick Bell, Karen Bosy, Kam Rehal

Find out more ➡️ itinerant-space.co.uk

itinerant space, Issue 2, was published July 2024, during RCA’s DTP week.

The co-editors of itinerant space launched an Open Call for Issue 2, during the RCA PhD Research Biennale 2023 at The Copeland Gallery in June. The call was open to PhD students in all the school at RCA, at all stages of the PhD journey. As a founding editor of this journal, I am looking forward to the new ideas each iteration will bring.

Click this link to view itinerant space, Issue 1: pilot. Our guide to submitting can be found here. Open Call for submissions can be found here.