I’ll use the award to support the development and delivery of Charged, a new body of work based on the simple idea that the things we believe carry a charge.
My practice explores expressions of freedom and creativity in the everyday. I’m interested in the transformative qualities of making and doing, engineering situations that uncover deep-seated primitive impulses to connect.
I make co-produced artworks across media, using the model of an expanded workshop as a site for connection and production. Collecting fragments from experimental workshop sessions, I combine and synthesise them in the studio, transforming into something greater than the sum of its’ parts; a modular, collective vision.
I’ve developed my methodology through a series of commissions and residencies. Recent projects have seem me install co-produced murals created with community groups and patients at two NHS hospitals in London (Placement, 2025, St Mary’s and Wanderings, 2025 for Lambeth Hospital); display a set of flags outside a private members club in Mayfair co-designed with primary school students from a deprived London borough (Landed, 2021, Royal Overseas League) and bury a collection of ceramic sculptures crafted by local hands within a dry stone wall on Pendle Hill, (Held, 2022, commissioned by In Situ.)
The support of The Dover Prize gives me the opportunity to distil and stretch my ideas. I’ll take the time to research and experiment further with new approaches to engagement. My work is context-led and I’ll deep dive into Darlington as I develop new work.
I’m experienced in partnership working and I plan to identify and nurture relationships with key community partners in Darlington. My aim is to develop a workshop programme leading to the production of a bespoke body of work co-produced with local people. I understand the value of local knowledge and a portion of the budget will pay for a local arts producer to support the planning and delivery of the workshops.
My multi-platform project and final presentation will capture individual expressions of a spirituality in the everyday, across communities and cultures, connected to make a work with meaning for many people.
By integrating many voices, I harness a universal poetry that brings together the disparate people whose generous input informs my work. In this way my project for Darlington will bring together the communities I end up working with: perhaps service users or volunteers from Darlington Assistance for Refugees; school groups; members of the Durham Miners Association.
I work at intersections and through my projects aim to enable connections that wouldn’t have otherwise happened. In this way my presence and practice will becomes a positive force for social and cultural cohesiveness in Darlington and its environs.
My multi-platform work leaves its legacy through myriad channels: for example, workshop participants will have their singular experience; collaborators engage with more agency; audiences to exhibitions take and share the stories from the objects on display.
My aim in conceiving a project is to make use of this; by designing something that works on many levels the reach is embedded in what I do. My projects are context led, but because of the egalitarianism of my approach and the universality of the themes I engage, I’ve found that even the most site-specific works tend to travel well and hold resonance for audiences beyond their locality.
I’m an artist working across media to produce multi-platform projects that evolve out of bodies of research around specific subjects and loci. My work frequently invites engagement, and I’ve developed methodologies for running expanded workshops that provide material for co-produced artworks in sculpture, print and the moving image.
I work with communities to explore ideas around freedom and control, aiming to uncover how ideologies embedded within our cultural, political and social structures filter into everyday lived experience. My process is fluid, intuitive and collaborative; I’m experienced in adapting my approach for a wide variety of settings and stakeholders. Previous projects have centred migration and nostalgia; primitive and spiritual identity; landscape as a linking object; the psychological fall-out of digitisation and creative play in response to trauma. I have worked on residencies and commissions for Tate, Baltic, PEER, In Situ, The National Trust, Royal Overseas League, Imperial Health Trust, the NHS, Create and South London Gallery. Connecting these diverse strands of research is my attempt to highlight the myriad, everyday strategies people adopt to counter various pressures. I’m particularly interested in the haptic, sensory qualities of making and doing, that I explore as therapeutic tools to support reflection and wellbeing. My work and projects elevate the commonplace and transient, using contemporary art as a poetic, progressive frame. In the past few years I have exhibited my work as part of the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, I’ve had film screenings at the BFI, Braziers and Images in Toronto. I have been commissioned by Imperial Health Charity, Royal Overseas League, the NHS and have done residencies for D6, In Situ, the National Trust and Walthamstow Wetlands Contemporary.
Do you have a degree in visual or applied arts at undergraduate and/or post-graduate level? Please provide details. (200 words)
I studied Fine Art BA (Hons), 2001 and the University of Derby and The Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, MFA in Fine Art (Media), 2009.
Have you previously received professional grants or awards? Please give details. (200 words)
Aesthetica Art Prize (longlist), 2024 Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, 2023 (shortlist) Adrian Carruthers Studio Award, 2009 (shortlist) Red Mansion Award, 2008 (shortlist) Jerwood Moving Image Award, 2008 (shortlist) Grants for the Arts Award, Arts Council England, 2005 Grants for the Arts Award, Arts Council England, 2003 Individual Artist Award, Northern Arts, 2001
I studied Fine Art BA (Hons), 2001 and the University of Derby and The Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, MFA in Fine Art (Media), 2009.
Aesthetica Art Prize (longlist), 2024
Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, 2023 (shortlist)
Adrian Carruthers Studio Award, 2009 (shortlist)
Red Mansion Award, 2008 (shortlist)
Jerwood Moving Image Award, 2008 (shortlist)
Grants for the Arts Award, Arts Council England, 2005
Grants for the Arts Award, Arts Council England, 2003
Individual Artist Award, Northern Arts, 2001
I am an active studio-member of artist-run City Studios.
From 2010-2018 I was a co-director of THIS artists-run studios in Tottenham.
From 2001-4 I was a member of the artists’ collective Disco, hosting exhibitions and projects in the north east of England.
Imperial Health Charity, Placement, 2025
NHS Trust South London and Maudsley, Wanderings, 2025
PEER Gallery, Unmasked, 2021
Royal Overseas League, Landed and In Residence, 2021
The Multi-Story Orchestra, Chamber Series, 2018
Walthamstow Wetlands Contemporary, Flight, 2018
Wirksworth Festival, In order to acquire a void, 2011
Arnolfini, PW10, 2010
Airspace Gallery, Didn’t We Do Well?, 2007
Site Gallery, Flat Like Reflections, 2005
NHS (Wanderings, series of ten digitally printed murals, dimensions variable, 2025)
Imperial Health Charity (Placement, digitally printed mural, 150x500cm, 2025)
Royal Overseas League (Landed, six textile flags, 2021)
Saatchi Collection (Objective Drawing, pigment ink on paper, 115x152cm, 2009)
Corridor 8, All Kinds of Hands, The Storey, Lancaster, Natalie Bradbury, 25 May 2025
New Yorker, Britain’s Idyllic Country Houses Reveal a Darker History, Sam Knight, 16 August, 2021
a-n magazine, Exeter Contemporary Open, Natalie Parsley, 8 October, 2012
The Guardian, You Shall Know Our Velocity, Baltic, Gateshead, Alfred Hickling, 1 Feb 2006
2023 Artist in residence, D6 Culture in Transit / National Trust Cragside, UK
2022 Artist in residence, In Situ, Pendle UK
2022 Artist in residence, Collective Matters, London
2019-20 Artist in residence at Powis Castle, The National Trust, Wales
2018 Artist in residence at Walthamstow Wetlands, London
2010 Artist in residence, The Florence Trust, London
Email: nisha@nishaduggal.co.uk
Address: 83 Ritchings Avenue, London, E17 6LD, GB
Local Authority: Waltham Forest
