I combine practices of painting, print, photography and video with archival and geographical research, to investigate overlooked structures in natural and man-made environments. I am fascinated by the passage of time and the ephemeral nature of the physical world. Architecture and geometry also inspire me, and my work navigates between the fleeting and the fixed.
Curiosity has anchored my work in the studio. I trained as a printmaker but found I was more interested in exploring variations on a theme than in printing editions. When I would set out to print an edition of twenty, I ended up with twenty unique images. Although I didn’t become a printmaker in any traditional sense, layering – of ideas, images and media – still lies at the heart of my process.
My parents ran a bookstore where I worked as a teenager. Looking back, being surrounded by books shaped my interest in archives, which I often use as a point of departure to develop imagery. I have responded to collections such as the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths University of London, where I created From Absorb to Zoom: An Alphabet of Actions in the Women’s Art Library, a digital print installation derived from printed materials in the archive.
Alternatively, I might gather my own photographic and video documentation of a fragile wetland as the starting point to generate a new body of work. I began a project about vulnerable wetlands and climate change in 2018, photographing wetlands in the industrialized Thames Estuary, during a residency with the UK arts organization, METAL, in Southend-on-Sea. I since have progressed my research through grants, residencies and exhibitions in the UK, US and Germany, documenting wetlands in coastal and inland locations.
I am drawn to habitat edges – where water meets land, where fresh water meets the sea and in the interface between nature and human activity. I am interested in recording both the beauty of – and human impacts on – fragile habitats, but am not a documentarian. I use my documentation as a starting point to create work in other media, including print and video installations in public spaces. In responding creatively to wetlands and watersheds, I hope to raise awareness of climate threats.
Anne Krinsky is a London-based artist, born in the US. She works with paint, print, photography and video. Her US solo shows include The Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, Massachusetts; Andrea Marquit Fine Arts, Boston; Soprafina Gallery, Boston; and her 10-year retrospective at the Trustman Gallery at Simmons College, Boston. She has made installations in response to archived collections in the US, UK and India. She exhibited her first project with a UK archive, From Absorb to Zoom: An Alphabet of Actions in the Women’s Art Library, at Goldsmiths University of London in 2015.
Anne Krinsky’s Tide Line Thames project investigated the river and its architecture between high and low tide lines in 2016 and 2017, as part of London’s Totally Thames festivals. The project culminated with a video collaboration with Tom Pearman in the Brunel Museum’s Thames Tunnel Shaft and with Tropical Thames, her digital print installation in Crossrail Place Roof Garden, commissioned by Canary Wharf Arts.
She has been working on an international project about vulnerable wetlands and climate change since 2018, when she documented Thames Estuary wetlands during a Time and Space Residency with METAL in Southend. Her 2020 research in South Coast wetlands in England led to overlapping shows in Worthing, England in 2021 and 2022 – outdoors on the Seafront Promenade and at the Worthing Museum and Art Gallery. In 2022 she was a Visiting Artist-in-Residence at 18th Street Art Center in Santa Monica, where her focus turned to the Los Angeles River Corridor. In 2023, she documented wetlands in Oysterville, Washington State, in residency at Willapa Bay AiR.
Anne Krinsky is the recipient of multiple grants, including an Artists International Development Fund Grant, Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice Grant, two Artist Bursaries from a-n The Artists Information Company, and two Arts Council England Grants for the Arts. The British Museum, Boston Public Library, American collector Graham Gund and Paintings in Hospitals England, have purchased her works, as have numerous corporate and private collectors on both sides of the Atlantic.
Additional residencies include Fundacion Valparaiso, Mojacar, Spain; Millay Colony for the Arts, Austerlitz, NY; Sanskriti Foundation, Delhi, India; Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Amherst, VA; the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT; Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, Schwandorf, Germany.
Top: Video Still, Los Angeles River Glendale Narrows, 2022. Bottom: Studio Shot, Photo Credit: Sebastien Pons.