„Julia Zinnbauer is our artist in residence at MERZ for the Summer. A string of coincidences from her childhood to the present day have engaged Julia’s passion for Scotland. When she was young her family acquired a Gilbert Scott telephone box that was cast in Scotland and had it installed in their back garden in Germany. Julia Zinnbauer‘s work engages architecture and calligraphy with fashion and story telling (here based around her childhood diaries). In anticipation of her Summer Residency Julia has woven an eloquent plea for retaining Sanquhar’s Post Office, poetically illustrating the necessity of communication from a position of isolation."
David Rushton, MERZ Gallery
Sanquhar, about my short film "phone box postcards"
The Sanquhar Arts Festival
This weekend, from the Sanquhar Arts Festival is taking place. Originally it was planned to inaugurate the Sanquhar Cultural Quarter, in the presence of Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, which unfortunately due to the current situation is not possible. But the Festival itself takes place - on the internet - and I’m happy to be part of. David Rushton compiled sixteen contributions from artists and performers from the Festival and beyond. Their photographs and films appear at regular intervals over the 22nd - 25th May weekend here: https://www.facebook.com/pg/sanquharartsfestival/
phone box postcards
Text, voice, calligraphy, postcards and editing by Julia Zinnbauer
Düsseldorf April/March 2020
I will never forget the morning in May 2019 when I woke up in a hostle on Lexington Avenue in Los Angeles, in a wooden bungalow that was so typical for California in the early twentieth century, with a pointed roof and a porch. In the gloomy living room I looked up my emails and found a message from David Rushton, who runs the MERZ Gallery, saying that my proposal had been accepted. THIS was rather surreal and the rest of the day I felt absolutely dizzy with happiness. My residency in Scotland was and still is planned for this summer. Thank you, Matt Hulse, for having sent the link to the MERZ Gallery to me!
Text, voice, calligraphy, postcards and editing by Julia Zinnbauer
Düsseldorf April/March 2020
The
short will feature in Sanquhar Arts Festival ‘running on FACEBOOK’
between May 22nd and 25th and will be presented on screen at MERZ as
soon as audience conditions permit. It can also be seen here: MERZ Gallery/Julia Zinnbauer.
The MERZ Residency in Scotland
„When a friend of mine told me about the MERZ Gallery and the opportunity to apply for a residency in Sanquhar, in Scotland, I decided to write a proposal immediately. While I was trying to find out something about the whole area and the program that takes place in an old lemonade factory, I imagined all the lorries transporting yellow lemons to the old mining town in the early days. A town that is famous for having the oldest post office in the world must be specialized in all questions concerning logistics, I thought.“ This is how my proposal for the artist residency at the MERZ Gallery in Sanquhar begins. I applied for the residency more than one year ago and by this an incredible story began.
„When a friend of mine told me about the MERZ Gallery and the opportunity to apply for a residency in Sanquhar, in Scotland, I decided to write a proposal immediately. While I was trying to find out something about the whole area and the program that takes place in an old lemonade factory, I imagined all the lorries transporting yellow lemons to the old mining town in the early days. A town that is famous for having the oldest post office in the world must be specialized in all questions concerning logistics, I thought.“ This is how my proposal for the artist residency at the MERZ Gallery in Sanquhar begins. I applied for the residency more than one year ago and by this an incredible story began.
I will never forget the morning in May 2019 when I woke up in a hostle on Lexington Avenue in Los Angeles, in a wooden bungalow that was so typical for California in the early twentieth century, with a pointed roof and a porch. In the gloomy living room I looked up my emails and found a message from David Rushton, who runs the MERZ Gallery, saying that my proposal had been accepted. THIS was rather surreal and the rest of the day I felt absolutely dizzy with happiness. My residency in Scotland was and still is planned for this summer. Thank you, Matt Hulse, for having sent the link to the MERZ Gallery to me!
"The whole project that I am planning for my residency in Sanquhar is very close to my heart because on one hand it revolves around very different forms of communication - the oldest post office in the world, music, writing letters and poems, language in general, old telephone boxes up to video calls via Facebook and messages via Instagram.
Morover, and this really moves me, in the context of the preparations for my residency in Scotland several friendships came into being - between Great Britain and North Rhine Westphalia, between Sanquhar, Strathkinness, London and Düsseldorf. All this offers a lot of consolation and optimism in times of Corona and Brexit.“ (J.Z.)