Jan Kerr

Artist & Poet

Still image from Urchin Hearts, Brittle Stars
Film/Poem/Installation
New York City, July 2024

© Jan Kerr. All rights reserved.

Time & chance no. 5
New York City 2024

Film/Poem/InstallationUrchin Hearts, Brittle Stars
Filmpoem/PerformanceLore
A tale of love, landscape & the gendered construct of self.
Pamphlet CatalogueThen Here Now (Still)
Site-specific installation poem exploring the geological bedrock underpinning Manhattan's skyline.Installed at Courtesy of Dietl
Dietl International
207 W 25th St. New York NY 10001

• Bio & Selected Projects

About

Artist and poet Jan Kerr was born in Scotland in 1959. Initially trained as a sculptor, she studied film at the Slade and recently completed the Poetry MA in Creative Writing at MMU. Her poem Compass will be published in Magma 96: The Antarctic. She has previously been shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize and longlisted for the Edwin Morgan Second Life Award.Her first solo exhibition, Time & Chance No. 5, at Courtesy of Dietl in New York in 2024, was an installation of site-specific poetry, performance and film exploring themes of love, landscape, gendered identity and the geology of deep time. It also marked a return to filmmaking with the filmpoem Urchin Hearts, Brittle Stars.Selected exhibitions include: Signs of the Times MoMA Oxford, the London Film Festival, the South London Gallery, the Edinburgh Film Festival, Cambridge Darkroom and Art in General, New York. The soundwork, I Am a Regional Variation; I Am My Mother’s Tongue, is held in the permanent collection of the Women’s Sound Archive.Freelance work includes: lead artist for TATE’s Circuit digital project at Oriel Mostyn, posie-maker to the Army of Beauty and creative team member for National Theatre Wales' production of Lifted By Beauty : Adventures in Dreaming. Through October 2026, her documentation of Suicide Chronicle One will be part of the large-scale installation Close to Home in the Cunard Building, Liverpool.

Reading from Lore at Courtesy of Dietl, New York July 2024