‘Through my exploration and rekindling of Black Mountain College archives I’ve sought to work against the grain of the ‘accepted history’ in search of alternative narratives highlighting the many women who remain distinctly underrepresented despite their participation in and contribution to the college. 

I’m interested in the young women who studied there, the faculty spouses who lived with young children on the campus and ate communally every evening with all of the students and faculty. I’m interested in the kitchen staff and the farmers who coordinated the communal project of working on and living off the land and who fed the whole community. These are the accounts I search for and these are the situated, lived experiences that help me to develop work with complexity and a nuanced understanding. My paintings playfully and fictionally assert alternatives for the present and not an unattainable utopian idea of the future. A present that is thick with remembrances of the past and one where female creativity has fulsome representation. Where models of generative and adaptive communal living prioritise creative play and ways we might care for each other.’
Kylie Banyard, 2019

Installation images by Zan Wimberley