In search for next Young Writer in Residence, in October 2023 we launched an open call for original submissions which responded to Whitechapel Gallery’s Autumn season of exhibitions.
We received a wide range of incredible submissions each offering their own unique take on the season, drawing upon the works of Nicole Eisenman, Anna Mendelssohn, Johanna Billing, and the artists featured in It All Starts With a Thread.
Gabrielle Fullam was appointed as Whitechapel Gallery’s Young Writer in Residence 2024.
Gabrielle took part in a residency from January – April 2024. Throughout this time, Gabrielle received support to develop their writing practice, and worked on producing an event and new piece of writing marking their residency.
With thanks to all those who applied, and to our selection panel which included Young Writer in Residence 2022 Yulin Huang, poet Nisha Ramayya, TISSUE founders Donna Marcus and Sam Moore and Whitechapel Gallery staff.
Gabrielle Fullam is an Irish-Punjabi writer from Dublin, living in Shadwell. She is studying an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck University, and is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, where she also served as President of the Student Union. She is a former editor of Icarus magazine, Ireland’s oldest literary journal. Her work centres on politicisation of the self.
Gabrielle Fullam, chats to Curator: Youth Programmes, Amelia Oakley, about her writing practice and residency so far.
For the final part of her time as Young Writer in Residence at Whitechapel Gallery, Gabrielle Fullam shares two new pieces of work.
Diary-Keeping and We, being so young, and lost are two companion poems, that span across form, perspective, and topic. Diary-Keeping takes three notes from my journals, concerning thoughts on writing as a form, interpersonal problems, and retrofuturism. It scrambles them, and highlights the parts of the resulting poem that speak to the purpose of the first diary entry.
We being so young, and lost pulls parts from Diary-Keeping attempting sonnets and villanelle. It explores the paradox of finding beauty in a world with less and less hope.
‘Concept, Process, Output’ seeks to frame the extractive and draining nature of making art, and explores how the artistic process changes your relationships with others and yourself. It is inspired by two pieces of work in the Whitechapel Gallery, Nicole Eisenman’s ‘Maker’s Muck’, in which a sculptor is literally surrounded by evidence of their productivity, as well as Anna Mendelssohn’s notebook on display which reads: “No-one should be used as a symbol” which muses on the justice and process of creating art out. – Gabrielle Fullam
