HORSEPOWER
​
Interactions between China, Mongolia and the steppe 2000-0 BCE
Miranda Creswell
Project Artist
“Strangely, although the Horespower project involves archaeology and static objects, there’s a strong focus on the idea of movement – of people, horses and ideas going from one place to another."
Miranda Creswell is an artist of many interests
Miranda Creswell describes herself as an artist “interested in unusual environments” and a few snapshots from her career show what she means: teaching art in Brixton Prison, supporting spinal injury patients by painting nature alongside them and celebrating biodiversity and nature recovery with three vast oil paintings at the Doddington estate in Lincolnshire. She’s held art residencies at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, Harris Manchester College and the CentQuatre in Paris, among others, and she became the first Artist in Residence at Oxford University’s Institute of Archaeology, working on a series of projects on the English landscape, the history of rivers and the creative process of pottery. Miranda recently made films with drawings about women scientists, a collaboration funded by L’Oréal with the Zoology Department of Oxford University and the Physics Department of the University of Cambridge.
Learn More
In this charming and insightful video, we hear from Miranda Creswell, the Horsepower project’s artist, about her work with children in China and the UK: from the challenge of teaching someone to draw a horse to her joy at the humour and humanity of the exchanges between pupils in very distant schools.
Horse Drawn Letters is a public engagement project between Cutteslowe Primary School in Oxford,UK and Xiahe Primary school, held at the Museum of Qin Terracotta Warriors and Horses in Xian, China. After workshops on how to draw a horse in 10 steps, involving over 100 children, decorated letters and envelopes were taken by Miranda Creswell to and from China and the UK. Enthusiastic and curious children from both countries, read the letters aloud, learnt about their respective schools and the history of the horse in China and Mongolia. It is hoped this project will continue between a school in Mongolia and a school in Scotland in the next year.