Ingrid Pollard, from the series 'Self Evident'. Museum no. E.327-2013. © Ingrid Pollard/ Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The inaugural Stuart Hall Fellow at the University of Sussex is influential photographer Professor Ingrid Pollard, and she will be ‘in conversation’ at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts on Tuesday 6 November.

Pollard is a media artist and researcher who has developed a social practice concerned with representation, history and landscape with reference to race, difference and the materiality of lens-based media. Her work is included in numerous collections including the Arts Council Collection and the Victoria & Albert Museum. 

She is currently working with the School of Media, Film and Music at Sussex.

The Fellowship is bestowed by the Stuart Hall Foundation, created to honour the legacy of the influential Jamaican-British academic and cultural theorist, and aims to provide opportunities for students and academics pursuing themes resonant with the work of Professor Hall, and continue his lifelong commitment to teaching. 

A special ‘in conversation’ event at the University of Sussex’s arts centre, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, coincides with Ingrid’s residency.

An evening with Ingrid Pollard will feature Ingrid in conversation with Lubaina Himid (Turner Prize-winning artist, curator and Professor at the University of Central Lancaster), and Professor Catherine Hall (historian, trustee of the Stuart Hall Foundation and Emerita Chair, Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership at University College London).

The event will take place on 6 November at 8pm. Tickets are £5 (£3 concessions).

Ingrid Pollard said as she started her fellowship: “I’m greatly looking forward to working at the University of Sussex as I begin my Fellowship with the School of Media, Film and Music. The photographs of mine that we’ll be working with are those which reflect on the lives of ordinary men and women in the urban and rural 1890s Caribbean. We’ll also be working with the archives at The Keep, next to the Sussex campus.

“I will be also be working with a range of students and faculty members. It’s always invigorating to work with people whose talent and skills are still taking shape.

“Through my work, we’ll be asking questions about the past and the ways in which it lives on in the persistent inequalities of the present. There are real resonances for some of the issues facing people around the world today, and I look forward to engaging with the students about how art, culture and photography can reflect and challenge these.”

Pollard’s residence at Sussex begins this autumn. During her time at Sussex she will further a commission, The Valentines Days, which was part of Making Jamaica at Autograph ABP in London, exploring how a new image of Jamaica was created through photography in the 19th century.

She is working with the University of Sussex archives held at The Keep.

Dr Simidele Dosekun, Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at the University, said of the appointment: “We are very much looking forward to having Ingrid with us; her work resonates strongly with our interests in the School of Media, Film and Music, in radical and inclusive forms of media representation and practice, and is especially important at the present political moment.”