ABOUT ANNIE FROST NICHOLSON  

Graduating from University of the Arts with Graphic Design in 2009, following a BA Hons in French and Italian from Sussex University in 2007, Frost Nicholson has always been fascinated by language and intimacy and has sought to communicate these visual threads throughout her career, closely influenced by artists Sophie Calle, Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger. After losing so many family members soon after graduating, navigating the non-linear world of grief and loss through her practice became Frost Nicholson’s direct line of survival, and her body of work has grown within and around her experience of being alive in the world.

 

Frost Nicholson has carefully developed her practice over the past twelve years, most recently working in the public realm to create aesthetically powerful touring grief and mental health installations. The Fandangoe Discoteca, a touring disco for mental health and collective grief (London, Milton Keynes and Berlin 2023), complete with a series of Grief Raves, was made in collaboration with The Loss Project, K67 Berlin and Street Soundsystem. The Fandangoe Whip, an ice cream van for post-pandemic grief and mental health (Latitude, Design Museum, Tate 2021), and The Fandangoe Skip, a kiosk for mental health (London and New York 2022), received footfalls of over 200,000 and international acclaim, culminating in a BBC World Service documentary about her practice.

 

The Staircase of Dreams (2020, longlisted for a Dezeen Award) and The Hope Exchange (2022), both commissioned for London Design Festival, are further examples of Frost Nicholson’s public realm work, receiving wide international press coverage and serving to create spaces for Londoners to find solace in their busy days, brightening up the mundane and lifting spirits as we navigate the hardest of times.

 

During the first lockdown, Frost Nicholson redesigned nurse’s scrubs for Marie Curie x NHS England, working with a palliative care nurse remotely to develop the uniform, celebrating International Year of the Nurse, as part of her ongoing working relationship with the charity. The artist’s work was then shot for a feature about grief and mental health for Channel 4, looking at the importance of her practice in the pandemic.

 

Frost Nicholson’s oeuvre is multi-disciplinary and includes film : in 2019 she screened her first short Into Your Light, directed with Tara Darby, at Tate Modern and on the Manhattan Bridge, looking at dancing as a tool for survival following great personal loss. This led to her first book, Tender Hearted Bold Moves, published by Rough Trade Books in 2020, followed closely by The Grief Mixtape, a monthly radio show on Soho Radio, exploring all forms of loss with guest artists such as Camille Walala, Morag Myerscough, Adam Nathaniel Furman and Wendy Erskine.

 

Annie’s next film, Grief is a Hungry Ghost, co-directed with writer Lara Haworth, is a film about love, loss and resistance shot in Rio, funded by Arts Council England. Screenings for this are TBA.

 

Frost Nicholson will begin work as an associate lecturer at LCC on the BA/MA Art Direction in October 2023, following a decade of working with young people in an arts capacity. She established and built an Art and Design department in a Hackney secondary school in 2014 and was then selected as Lead Designer on Design Museum’s young people’s programme for the duration of 2022. Frost Nicholson’s remit is simple : to encourage young people from all backgrounds to know themselves better through their creative practice.

 

Frost Nicholson’s capsule clothing collection label has featured in Vogue Italia and been worn at the BAFTAs and sold out her show at Ace Hotel in NYC, where she later became an Artist in Residence. She now makes to order and all pieces can be viewed in her online shop.

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