In this interview, Hannah Nepilova speaks to the artist Eleanor Meredith, who is collaborating on a project with the Fieri Consort in which her artworks will accompany a recording of madrigals by the Italian Renaissance composer Luca Marenzio.
The madrigals themselves are based on Giovanni Battista Guarini‘s Il Pastor Fido – one of the most widely read works of secular literature in Europe in the 17th century, which the Fieri Consort is keen to bring to light through the recording.
Originally hailing from West Lothian, Scotland, Eleanor Meredith is an artist who works from her studio near the sea in the East Neuk of Fife in Scotland. She creates ceramics, paintings and prints.
Her work is playful, often focused on depicting form with minimal gesture. It also tends to cross the artistic disciplines of painting, animation and ceramics. She has exhibited her work at National Media Museum, Rochelle School, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Tramway Glasgow, Oval Space. And has created work for clients as diverse as Southbank Centre, BBC, Thames and Hudson, Hotel Bloom, and the Scottish Government. Amongst her best-known projects was Anno, a collaboration with her sister, the composer Anna Meredith, in which she created a series of 16 films to accompany her sister’s music: a contemporary take on Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, combining and intertwining Vivaldi’s four extremely well-known seasonal concerti, The Four Seasons, with her own new electronic compositions.
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In 2011 Eleanor Meredith co-founded and art directed the Loop with Claudia Boldt. The Loop is a magazine for children which encouraged thinking and making in its readers. Together they made Think and Make like an artist, published in 2017 by Thames and Hudson.
In addition to her creative work, Eleanor Meredith teaches on the illustration BA at Norwich University of Arts, and runs workshops at The BFI Animation Academy, The Apple store, V & A Museum, Ravensbourne College and the National Portrait Gallery.