Film by Fine Art alumna Astrid Butt premiered at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
A new short film created by BA Fine Art alumna Astrid Butt for a Yorkshire Graduate Award residency was showcased over the August bank holiday weekend at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Astrid was the recipient of the Yorkshire Graduate Award for 2023, a unique residency opportunity for a recent graduate from a Yorkshire-based university. Residencies have always been at the heart of Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP), offering opportunities for early career and emerging artists to reflect and move forward with their practice.
Astrid Butt is a feminist film and performance artist, living and working in Leeds. Astrid graduated with a BA Fine Art from the University of Leeds in 2022, winning the prestigious FUAM Graduate Art Prize the same year for her horror film Bird Diaries (2022).
Astrid Butt, Bird Diaries, 2022 (screenshot). © The artist.
Butt began her residency at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in October 2023, returning to the park in January and April 2024 while completing her MA in Fine Art at the University of Leeds.
Working across film and performance, Butt’s practice utilises the grotesque and the surreal to express female anxieties, with a particular focus on generational trauma and the terrors of the body. Butt spent her residency developing her practice and shooting a new surreal horror-mystery film in the grounds of YSP. The piece is an exploration of womanhood in relation to the human form, and the terror of not being in control of your own body.
Astrid Butt on residency at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 2024. Photo © Astrid Butt. Courtesy YSP.
Astrid’s film – A Horse with No Eyes – was premiered at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s Boathouse at the end of August 2024. There will be a further opportunity to view the film at the University of Leeds this September, where a range of Astrid’s work will be showcased as part of FAT BABY, this year’s MA Fine Art Degree Show.
Astrid Butt said:
“The Yorkshire Graduate Award has been my first residency, and it has been life changing to say the least.
“During my three-week residency at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, I have been developing a short film to be screened at the park at the end of August. I have used the park’s boundless fields of grass and surreal sculptures to create a fantastical filming location, where the boundaries of the body are nowhere to be found.
“Getting the Yorkshire Graduate Award has been an incredible opportunity. The time I have spent at the park has been unforgettable. It is increasingly difficult to find a fulfilling career that matches your skillset or balance a full time job with your artistic practice.
Filming A Horse with No Eyes at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 2024. Photo © Astrid Butt. Courtesy YSP.
“Yorkshire Sculpture Park has given me the opportunity to develop my skills, compensated me for my work and time, and given me a platform to share my art with the public, for which I am endlessly thankful.
“The final product of this residency is a 30-minute short film, titled A Horse with No Eyes, which was screened at the Boathouse at Yorkshire Sculpture Park from 24 to 26 August.
“The film reimagines the site of YSP as a cursed land, in which the women who come upon it find they now possess the ability to transform into animals. Our protagonist – a girl who dreams of turning into a bird – soon discovers that the animals that inhabit the land are women who have lost their humanity and forgotten how to return to their original bodies.
Screenshot from Astrid Butt's film A Horse with No Eyes, 2024. Photo © Astrid Butt. Courtesy YSP.
“The film is an exploration of the female body, and the shame and search for agency that come with it. The body is presented as a site rife with violence, inhabited by an all-consuming desire for pleasure and carnage that is almost parasitical. The land itself is also treated as bodily, constantly warping and morphing, using dreamlike, candy-coloured atmosphere to disguise its hostility and cruelty.
Astrid Butt’s film, A Horse with No Eyes, will be screened in Purple Studio (second floor) as part of this year’s MA Fine Art Degree Show which runs from 3 to 8 September in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds. Please note, the film contains sensitive content that might not be suitable for all visitors.
FAT BABY showcases the work of eight graduating artists through a group show in the ground floor Project Space and solo shows across the school’s studios and shared spaces. Find out more about FAT BABY including opening times.
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Screenshot from Astrid Butt's film A Horse with No Eyes, 2024. Photo © Astrid Butt. Courtesy YSP.
