AIR Open 2024 Announcement

Thrilled to hear I have made the final selection of 60 artworks for the AIR Open 2024. A big thank you to the judging panel (Alan Baker, Jude Wainwright, David Gledhill and Mike Chavez-Dawson) for selecting my piece ‘Salty’ from over 1,300 pieces of work. Feeling humbled and truly honoured!

The exhibition launch will take place on Thursday 15th August at Rogue Artist Studios from 6-9pm with all welcome to attend. If you’re free then I hope to see you there!

Other artists in the line-up include:

Aimee Spilsted, Alex Aiton, Amelia Frances Wood, ANDI, Archie Leigh-Jones, Becky Moon, Bethan Hamilton, Bill Psarras, Chris Lewtas, Ciarraí MacCormac, Craig fisher, Daniel H Bell, Enxi Liu, Gareth Cairns, Hang Zhang, Helen Davies, Jay Ottewell, Julie Cassels, Justine Lesage, Kate Street, Katy Mason, Kelan Andrews, Laura Nathan, Lucy Ridges, Lucy Waters, Lois Hopwood, Luke Skiffington, Lula Braimbridge, Marc Remshaw, Marie Jones, Nicola Bolton, Nigel Grimmer, Nisaa Saeed Raja, Rachel Ackroyd, Ramon Omolaja Adeyemi, Ruby Tingle, Sam Owen Hull, Sara Hindhaugh, Simon Leahy-Clark, Steve Sutton, Tom Motley and Vincent James.

Huge congratulations to you all! I can’t wait to see your work at the show.

AWOL / Comme Ca Open 2024 – First Prize Winner

Thrilled to share the news from this evening that I am the recipient of AWOL / Comme Ca Open 2024 First Prize award. It was such a wonderful surprise! Many thanks to the selection panel and the judges Sean Williams, Ceri Morgan and Short Supply for the honour, it is greatly appreciated.

Also a big thank you to all at AWOL and Comme Ca for the seamless curation of work and making the event one to remember. Special mentions for David French, Jude Wainwright, Claire Turner and last (but by no means least), Cass Art for the fantastic goodie bags you provided to all artists, the vouchers I received as part of my prize and the opportunity to show in your Manchester gallery (can’t wait to get planning!).

Delighted for the lovely Laura Nathan too with her highly commended award! Many congratulations to her; very well deserved for her strikingly beautiful and poignant piece.

Photo appears courtesy of Jude Wainwright.

AWOL / Comme Ca 2024 Open Call Preview

A few pictures from the AWOL/Comme Ca Art Open 2024 preview. Had such a fantastic evening! Many great conversations with beautiful people amongst a gorgeous, eclectic selection of work. It must’ve been a huge challenge to narrow down the 200 odd entries to 22 artists!

 

The show is open to the public at Hope Mill from the 18th May and runs until Sat 22nd June 2024 (Opening times are Wednesday and Thursday 11-4pm & Sat 11-2pm). Plenty of time to catch it if you are about in the area! If you are new to the space, the gallery at Hope Mill is amazing too – great light with wonderful views of Ancoats and beyond. Highly recommend a visit!

Manchester Open 2024, HOME

Wonderful evening catching up with a number of familiar faces and meeting new ones at the Manchester Open 2024 (a few of whom are captured here).

It was too busy to really see the work properly so I will head back in the not too distant future for a closer look! The show is open until Sunday 28th April so there is plenty of time to see a snapshot of what Manchester’s creative scene has to offer. A catalogue of participating artists is available here.

Many thanks to Ruby Knopf who has kindly given me permission to share a couple of her photos of the evening.

Bury Open 2023, “Passage” Interactions

Great to have the opportunity to return and see the interactions which have taken place during the third and final stencilling of my piece.

I find it exciting to see the different kinds of mark making and the interplay they have with the letterforms preceding them – you never know what will happen to the piece next! Special thanks to Usie Isaac for the final picture (taken on the 20th January). The other pictures were from my visit on 4th January.

Tees Preview at Rogue Artists’ Studios

 

Doors opened at Rogue Studios this weekend for the Tees “shop”. If you have been unable to make it this weekend, the show is open by appointment or between 12-4pm on Saturdays. All T-shirts are available to purchase (including the ones I made).

The catalogue from the show is available here (although the information I supplied did not make it in for some reason so I will supply it here instead).

Title of the diptych and medium:

“Mind the Gap”, unique recycled fabric embellishments on sustainable cotton shirts.

What was the idea behind the T-shirt: 

Language is a powerful tool. When adopted by artists, it is utilised to interrogate the political, social and cultural landscape. Its position on t-shirts is no different. Through the use of text, we are drawn to question how we think, feel, function, judge, and differ from one another.

With this premise in mind I was inspired to create a piece exploring text as a direct (or rather indirect) form of communication. I was interested in how material usage and approach can be harnessed to create emphasis, drawing subtle references for those who decode it.

I decided to recycle and repurpose fast fashion slogan T-shirts sourced from charity shops, in order to highlight the waste generated by the industry through such “joke” products and comment on the duplicitous actions of some suppliers.

Price of T-Shirt:

£200 each

 

Live with It Preview at Mura Ma Art Space, Marple

Lovely preview event this evening at Mura Ma. It was wonderful to view the results of the unseen installation performance! The premise definitely gave the space a very different atmosphere.

Jane and Nan on curating and developing ideas for the show:

“Jane and I wanted to explore ideas around creative and artistic practice in the home and questioning who gets to be the curator. We believe that anyone who creates an environment, however small, be it a shelf, a studio flat, shelter or a house does so with their own artistic, aesthetic, and cultural sensitivities. Reading Shaun McNiff’s book, Trust the Process in the early days of my own practice, helped me tune into this idea that domestic space, arrangements, physical activities around the home, each offers insights into our unique expression as humans.

“Collecting objects is associated with building meaning into our lives and the things around us are vessels for memory. The way we display those objects is vital to our creating a world in which we feel safe and sheltered from the outside world and in that becomes an expression of our inner world.”

“Rethinking, re-imagining the gallery space as a place not only to experience artworks but to participate in this mise en scene as actors performing their roles. As a modern gallery we want to show people that art offers a multi-dimensional value to life, whether that is art, or a handmade item or even something given to us with all that embedded meaning and memory. It is about creatively constructing our own reality and bring together objects that help us to create that world, express who we are and to act as memory holders.”

Nan Collantine

“It seems a simple act to place my work in an empty space but there is something profound and quite daunting in the act of choosing, as the first actor on the stage setting in motion the scene for what is to follow.

In activating the space within a freeform concept lays the foundation for an unknown structure and that is exhilarating. Like a seed whose DNA has been scrambled and knows not what it will become but knows that from its germination something new and wonderful will bloom.

I’m excited to play my part at the start of the construction of a stage setting to which each artist will bring their own flavour and when the viewers arrive to take their part the mise en scene will be complete.”

Jane Fairhurst

You can find information on the exhibiting artists here.

The show is open until 21st October and the space will host an accompanying programme of events and activities. These sessions will investigate home as a place of creative endeavour, observe and discuss the practice of collecting and arranging, and explore how domestic labour and caring can be reframed as valuable creative capital.

The exhibition will also evolve as art and all objects in the exhibition are available to buy and be taken away (as in a shop). Sold items will be replenished on a weekly basis and different artists will be invited to place work within the installation, so no two viewings will ever be the same!

Upcoming show: Live with It at Mura Ma, Marple

Delighted to share news that I will be participating in Live with It (an artist-activated home environment):

“Somewhere between an expanded still life and a stage set – an invitation to participate in an imagined occupancy. Mise-en-scene.”

“A lived-in house is animated by assorted daylight practicalities: the tasks and furnishings associated with eating, cleaning, sleeping, revolving arrangements of domestic clutter; the comings and goings of friends, lovers, children, and relatives; or the intricate rituals of the solitary dweller.”

Co-curated by Jane Fairhurst and Nan Collantine, this exhibition will give way to an interior space furnished and inhabited with items made and found by thirty artists.

Jane Fairhurst and Kat Button will be activating the space with soft sculptures. There will also be items that carve up the space to create inner rooms and furniture pieces to denote the uses for each space. From these, the installation will be built in the gallery from the artworks and objects brought in by the artists.  Both artworks and objects will be available to buy from 2nd September – 21st October 2023.

The artists’ home is “a boundary between the world at large and the private centre, as a container of the everyday, and as an activated environment”.

Manifest Calling – Upcoming Artist’s Talk

Just a quick note to let you know that the Manifest Arts have launched the Manifest Calling event I will be speaking at on Eventbrite (as well as on Facebook). It is free to attend but ticketed, and I have been informed that there are roughly fifty left of the 100 available.

Taking place on Sunday 21st July from 2pm onwards, the talk will house 10 speakers (each with 7 minutes allocated). It has been designed to provide a quick snapshot of the diverse art being produced in the region. With a healthy mix of arts organisations, painters, photographers, performers, installation artists and sculptors as well as leaders of outsider art projects, it is guaranteed to be informative, educational, and enjoyable!

Artist talk with Sara Riccardi at Salford Museum and Art Gallery

Thoroughly enjoyed guiding the public through my solo show “Beyond the Linear” with the brilliant art historian Sara Riccardi of Art Across the other evening. It was wonderful to see everyone engaging with my practice and making connections between the variety of processes I use.

For this event, Sara and I decided to approach the talk in a slightly unusual way. The audience were called upon to determine points of focus through vigorous discussion. This informed the path we took around the exhibition and as a result the talk could have taken several different routes; it all depended on the audience’s perceptions of the work on display. This format was conceived by observing my practice as a whole; responding to my processes, identifying interwoven concepts and exploring my working methods.

Thank you very much to Sara for her fascinating historical insights and Steven Heaton for documenting the event (all photos appear courtesy of him).