Organizer Information
The Photographers' Gallery, based in London, explores how photography connects, captivates, and radically changes the world today. Since 2012, the Gallery'sextensive work around digital and new technologies has been pioneering in thinking about photography's relationship to computational culture. Its programme spans artist commissions, exhibitions, academic research, and public events, alongside its online platform Unthinking Photography, which explores the increasingly automated and networked life of images. The Gallery is a registered charity (no. 262548), founded by Sue Davies, who in 1980 curated the exhibition In and Out of Space featuring the Voyager Golden Record photographs. This residency is delivered in partnership with The Ampersand Foundation, a UK grant-awarding charity founded in 2011 by businessman, collector, and philanthropist Jack Kirkland, dedicated to supporting the visual arts; since its founding, the Foundation has awarded millions of pounds in grants to art organisations and visual art projects, mainly within the United Kingdom.
Title & Description
Open Call: Cite the past, sight the stars
The Photographers' Gallery invites applications for a new residency in Derbyshire, based at Wigwell Lodge, for artists working with expanded photography and digital practices. Set against the context of photography's 200th anniversary, the two-month residency is an opportunity to research, experiment and expand thinking around photography, technology and innovative approaches to image making and visual culture. Working in partnership with The Ampersand Foundation, the selected artist is encouraged to use the residency as an opportunity to test ideas, explore new methodologies and pursue speculative or research-led projects.
Theme
Cite the past, sight the stars — drawing on Aby Warburg's unfinished Mnemosyne Atlas, NASA's 1977 Voyager Golden Record, the Gallery's 1980 exhibition In and Out of Space, the Wirksworth StarDisk, Susan Buck-Morss's essay "Seeing Global," and the Gallery's Inverted World Labs project. Proposals may respond to one or several of the following, or use them simply as a point of departure: image-making, celestial fictions and realities; institutional archives, including The Photographers' Gallery and other archives; photography's relationship to computational culture; collective knowledge, human and nonhuman; deep time; ideas around civilisations or the universal; how Earth's knowledge can be distilled into 116 images; how photography travels and spreads through space, time and networks; transmissions, long distance communication, radio satellite imagery; cosmic/earthly debris; and digital twins and AI world models.
Categories
- Residency
- Photography
- Technology
- AI
- Research
- Interdisciplinary Arts
Eligibility
- Open to individual artists only (not duos, groups, collaborations, or collectives)
- Must be over 18
- Must have the legal right to work in the UK; the Gallery states it cannot sponsor visas
- Applicants may apply with only one application
Program Benefits & Awards
- Two months' accommodation and studio space at Wigwell Lodge, Derbyshire
- A £1000 stipend per month
- A £1000 production budget
- Up to £500 towards travel
- Promotion before and throughout the residency
- Curatorial and administrative support from The Photographers' Gallery throughout the residency, with potential to develop into a project or commission for 2027/2028
- A public presentation or showcase at The Photographers' Gallery or a partner venue at the conclusion of the residency, potentially timed to the Spring Equinox on 20 March 2027
Application Fee
None
How to Apply?
Online Application
Key Dates
- Application Deadline: 6 September 2026
- Interviews: 21 September 2026, for up to 3 shortlisted applicants (short online interview)
- Results Announced: by Wednesday 30 September 2026
- Residency Period: 2 February – 31 March 2027
- Potential Showcase: to coincide with the Spring Equinox, 20 March 2027
Location
Wigwell Lodge, Derbyshire, England
Additional Details
- Selection panel: Sam Mercer (Curator of Photography and Technology at The Photographers' Gallery), Michelle Henning (Professor in Photography and Media, University of Liverpool), Milia Xin Bi 毕昕 (curator and writer), Sarah Cook (Professor of Museum Studies, University of Glasgow), and a representative of The Ampersand Foundation.
- While we understand you may use generative AI in your application, we encourage you to consider how the writing reflects and relates to your practice.
- The residency runs through the astronomical spring equinox (20 March, 20:24), meaning daylight hours will be short (dark from roughly 4–5pm); the cottage has central heating throughout.
- No staff are based onsite, though the curator will visit at intervals during the residency.
- The accommodation has two bedrooms; visitors and partners are welcome to stay, though the residency itself is open to individual-artist applications only.
- Full details and FAQs are available as a downloadable PDF from the listing page.
- Previous Wigwell Lodge resident (2026): artist Felix Loftus, whose Waste as Resource residency used a permacomputing approach with old smartphones and solar-powered landscape cameras, in partnership with The Ampersand Foundation.