Austen and Turner: Creativity and connection Lela Harris, Rommi Smith and Olivia Carpenter
Event details
This year marks the 250th anniversary of the births of Jane Austen (1775-1817) and JMW Turner (1775-1851), both innovators in their respective creative practices.
Our panel discussion highlights the creative practices of artist-in-residence Lela Harris and writer-in-residence Rommi Smith for the exhibition Austen and Turner: A Country House Encounter, co-curated by Harewood House and the University of York's Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, with additional curatorial advice from Jade Foster.
In conversation with Olivia Carpenter, of the University of York’s Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, Lela and Rommi will offer insights into their archival research and creative inspiration.
Join us as our panel explores how connections with the past, through the prism of creative practice, hold the potential to tell new stories in the present.
This event will take place live on Zoom Webinar. You will receive a link to join a couple of days before the event and a reminder an hour before. During the event, you can ask questions via a Q&A function, but audience cameras and microphones will remain muted throughout.
You may also be interested in Austen and Turner: A Country House Encounter, a landmark exhibition on Austen and Turner at Harewood House, West Yorkshire, co-curated by the University of York’s Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies.
During the Festival, we are also presenting an interactive workshop, Making with Jane Austen and JMW Turner, at York Explore Library on Sunday 1 June. (Choice of two sessions.)
Image credit: JMW Turner, Harewood House from the South, 1798, Harewood House Trust
Photo credits: Lorna Chorley (Lela Harris) and Lizzie Coombes (Rommi Smith)
About the speakers
Lela Harris is an artist based in the Lake District, most known for her portraits uncovering the stories of those often overlooked and marginalised by history. Lela was recently a finalist for the Museums Association Decolonisation Award 2023 for her Black Lancastrians Exhibition at Judges’ Lodgings Museum in Lancaster and awarded Runner Up in the V&A Illustration Awards 2022 Book Cover Category for her work on the first illustrated edition of The Color Purple by Alice Walker, published by the Folio Society. As part of the Austen and Turner exhibition, Lela will show a selection of her exploratory collages for the commission, looking at how one of Austen’s characters might have explored Harewood House, as well as highlighting the house’s historic colonial connections.
Dr Rommi Smith is an award-winning poet, playwright, performer, librettist, curator and broadcaster, who specialises in the imaginative critical and creative (re)interpretation of archival materials. Rommi is a scholar of the Black Atlantic, whose doctoral research spans English, American and African literature, the colonial period, the Black Diaspora and the west. Rommi is the inaugural Parliamentary Writer-in-Residence, a three-time BBC Writer in Residence, and most recently Poet in Residence for the Wordsworth Trust. During her role as Writer-in-Residence for Harewood House, specifically for the Austen and Turner exhibition, she will work with Thin Ice Press at the University of York, to create prints of her work, written during the residency. Rommi will lead creative workshops and a cumulative performance of original work in collaboration with composer and musical director, Christella Litras.
Dr Olivia Carpenter is a specialist in late 18th- and 19th-century British and American literature in the Department of English and Related Literature and the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York. Her research addresses the representation of Black characters in novels, and the politics of slavery and Abolition, including legal history in Britain and the colonies.
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