Presented in collaboration with the Hilma af Klint Center Adelsö, the residency marks the first time Hilma af Klint’s studio has been opened to a contemporary artist. Established to support artistic research and production, the programme is curated by Carl and Katharine Kostyál and forms part of the newly established Hilma af Klint Center Adelsö, the first public institution dedicated to the artist.
Built by Hilma af Klint in 1917 on the island of Munsö, the atelier served as her studio and home between 1918 and 1926. It was here that she developed her practice, began her esoteric paintings, and worked in close proximity to the landscape that informed her artistic and spiritual thinking. Although she later moved elsewhere, af Klint continued to return to the studio throughout her life. Following the dissolution of The Five, the atelier also became a place of meeting for the circle of women who remained central to her artistic and spiritual practice.
Brittney Leeanne Williams’ paintings explore the body as a site of transcendence, memorialisation, suffering and spiritual experience. Working between figuration and abstraction, she considers the body as both subject and structure, allowing architecture, landscape, and the figure to collapse into one another. Her recent work draws upon histories of mysticism and Theosophy, particularly Thought-Forms (1905) by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater, while exploring painting as a devotional image that mediates between material and immaterial worlds.