Time & chance no. 5 : New york city july 2024

Jan Kerr was born in Ayr, Scotland in 1959. Initially trained as a sculptor, she studied film as a post-graduate at the Slade School of Art, London. Using text, film and sound, she explores themes of love, landscape, identity and the geology of deep time. Exhibitions include Signs of the Time MoMA Oxford, the South London Gallery, the London Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival, the Cambridge Darkroom and Art in General, New York. The soundwork, I am A Regional Variation:I am My Mother's Tongue, is held in the permanent collection of the Women’s Sound Archive.
 

After her poem Not Land was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in 2018, she  undertook an MA in Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2021. In 2023 she was long-listed for the Edwin Morgan Second Life Awards.
 

She has lived in North Wales since 2000, raising a family and working as an artist and photographer. She was a lead artist and mentor for TATE on their Circuit programme (2014-19), and worked freelance and as a volunteer for National Theatre Wales from 2009. In 2017 she was a member of the creative team on their production, Lifted By Beauty, Adventures in Dreaming.

In the past decade she has been writing soley for the page. Urchin Hearts, Brittle Stars - installed as part of Time & Chance No. 5  at Dietl, New York - marks a return to film-making.