Martyn Lucas is an artist, curator and educator based in Wigan. In addition to his studio practice at Cross Street Arts, he works on projects with artists and communities across Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Yorkshire. Since graduating in Fine Art from Reading University followed by post-graduate study in Banff, Canada and London, he has exhibited throughout the UK, in Canada and the USA. For 10 years he managed a small-scale public art gallery. He has curated a wide range of gallery-based and public art projects and currently manages the exhibitions programme at West Yorkshire Print Workshop.
Read MoreElizabeth Kwant is a visual artist, researcher and curator, with an interdisciplinary practice. Her work gives voice to contemporary socio- political issues, often working in collaboration with marginalised communities, in partnership with local and national organisations.
Recent exhibitions include; Am I not a woman and a sister The International Slavery Museum Liverpool (2019- 2020), Displaced The Travelling Gallery Scotland (2019), Print: A Catalyst for Social Change Bury Art Museum & Sculpture Centre (2019), TIME after [( )] after TIME WASPS Glasgow (2019), Habeas Corpus Manchester Cathedral (2019), In Transit Canada House Manchester, Radical and Real Film Shorts HOME Manchester, Mediterranea DOK Artist Space Edinburgh, Mediterranea Nomas Projects Dundee, In Nothing Flat Mark Devereux Projects (2017), Greater Manchester Art Prize (2017), Mediterranea System Gallery Newcastle (2017), Waiting 35 Chapel Walk Sheffield (2018), Rogue Open Waterside Art Centre (2016), Tracing Presence People’s History Museum Manchester (2013), Tracing Presence Z-Arts Manchester (2013), Tracing Presence The Mustard Tree Manchester (2012). Kwant holds an MA in Fine Art from Edinburgh College of Art/ Edinburgh University (2006).
Her work has been featured in press and articles including; BBC Africa, ITV News, Associated Press, The New York Times, BBC Radio Merseyside and John Moores Journalism.
Read MoreMorgan Tipping's practice is informed by social structures and institutional frameworks in a dialogical way that adapts to diverse contexts. Influenced by the experiences of people caught between institutional, social and political constraints, Morgan's work pushes for change with structural and aesthetic liberation.
Read MoreChrysalis Arts Development is an agency supporting the visual arts and environmentally responsible arts practice. We connect audiences in the rural North with high quality visuals arts and we help visuals artists develop environmentally responsible arts practice. Chrysalis Arts Development addresses the need for excellent art and for high quality support for talent development across a challenging geographical area. We believe that artists can transform places and invigorate communities both through the work they make and through their contribution to the wider social and economic infrastructure.
Read MoreMy work is about ordinary people, everyday life, and overlooked places. I like finding exceptional stories in unremarkable locations. I like to change the accepted narrative, and help people to see the place they live through a new lens. I often start work by asking people to help me explore a place, and use archives, literature, and local collections to get a deeper understanding.
https://mrdanthompson.wordpress.com
Read MoreCatherine Wynne-Paton is a conceptual media artist concerned with interpreting knowledge held deep within. She uses gesture and movement to begin to answer philosophical questions. Her work is informed by an interest in text resonant with particular places and the people connected with it.
She is creator of The Lost Library which has appeared at The National Eisteddfod of Wales, Fringe Arts Bath, Deptford X Fringe, The Wrexham Open and MainSpring Arts.
Wynne-Paton studied Fine Art at Hereford College of Arts, received the Meadow Arts graduate prize, was the first Print Shed artist in residence, where she later had her first solo show in 2015 and has received PEAK micro commission for new work.
She is a founding director of Framework Herefordshire, set up in 2014 to support emerging artists through exhibitions, talks and opportunities for skill development. She has curated graduate exhibitions in London and Hay-on-Wye, PaperFields. She sat on the Jury for the Hidden Gems grant scheme, delivered by Herefordshire’s a Great Place that brings together the arts, heritage, rural communities and the creative use of digital technology.
She has an enduring interest in supporting the work of other contemporary artists working in rural and remote areas, which led to creating an archive of conversations with artists.
From April - August 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, she created weekly art activity sheets for people stuck at home, gave Italian art talks on Skype, made her front window into an exhibition venue showing 60 paintings April - July and turned planned live performances of The Lost Library into a series of 15 videos.
https://www.wynnepaton.co.uk/the-lost-library
Open Jar Collective is a group of socially engaged artists and designers operating within co-operative principles. We believe that artistic practices can contribute meaningfully to the development of new perspectives on culture and the environment through the Sharing of food, ideas and possibilities for change. Through active and creative community engagement, our work strives to empower people to take part in the growing debate about the future of our local and global food systems. Open Jar Collective members are Alex Wilde, Clem Sandison, Hannah Brackston, Daniele Sambo, Nicola Godsal and Beth Ramsay
https://openjarcollective.wordpress.com/
Read MoreIndustria is an artist-run network, working to re-politicise the ‘art world’ through working groups that scrutinise institutions and infrastructures in order to imagine and work towards new social universes. To situate ourselves and make transparent our potential for complicity in a status quo that offers us a degree of comfort and protection, Industria is mainly administrated by two young, white, cis, straight and non-disabled women artists living in London, one of whom is also an art worker, from mixed middle and working class backgrounds.
Read MoreTheaster Gates lives and works in Chicago. Gates creates work that focuses on space theory and land development, sculpture and performance. Drawing on his interest and training in urban planning and preservation, Gates redeems spaces that have been left behind. Known for his recirculation of art-world capital, Gates creates work that focuses on the possibility of the “life within things.” Gates smartly upturns art values, land values, and human values. In all aspects of his work, he contends with the notion of Black space as a formal exercise – one defined by collective desire, artistic agency, and the tactics of a pragmatist. Gates has exhibited and performed at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France; Sprengel Museum Hannover, Germany (2018); Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2018); National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., USA (2017); Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada (2016); Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy (2016); Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2013); Punta della Dogana, Venice, Italy (2013) and dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany (2012). He was the winner of the Artes Mundi 6 prize and was a recipient of the Légion d'Honneur in 2017. He was awarded the Nasher Prize for Sculpture 2018, as well as the Urban Land Institute, J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development.
Gates is a professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Visual Arts and the College. Gates also serves as the Senior Advisor for Cultural Innovation and Advisor to the Dean. Gates is Director of Artists Initiatives at the Lunder Institute for American Art at Colby College Museum of Art and the 2018/2019 Artist-in-Residence at the Getty Research Institute (GRI).
https://www.theastergates.com/
Read MoreBernie loves working in participatory and community arts. She is passionate about art and creativity being accessible to everyone - often working with people who have less opportunity to express themselves. She encourages people to join in and 'have a go' and is often delighted when participants are surprised by the quality of their own work. Trained as a Fine Art Printmaker, she also works in textiles and digital media. She is skilled in curating and presenting work to its best advantage.
Read MoreWe’re actively rethinking what a gallery can be. We produce exhibitions, long-term collaborative projects, publications, festivals, and university courses — locally and worldwide. We proactively take risks to spark crucial conversations and enable creative expression. We’re taking a lead on socially engaged photography nationally. Bringing different voices, photographers and communities together, we establish projects where the collaborative process is just as important as the final product.
Read MoreSenior Lecturer/Course Leader for MA Fine Art at UCLan. Co-founder and director of 'In-Situ', a non-profit Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation. MMU PhD candidate, with research analysing social artistic processes from the perspective of the artist, adding to debates around what social arts practice is, and what its limits are in its original social context and systems of dissemination.
Read MoreLes Monaghan's work listens to and amplifies the unpowerful. He often uses a respectful photographic style that ensures anonymity. He makes difficult photographs and text pieces that challenge contemporary media portrayals of those with whom he works.
www.lesmonaghan.blogspot.co.uk
Read MoreToby Lloyd and Andrew Wilson have worked collaboratively since 2012, building frameworks that they invite others into to communicate and challenge one an others experiences of everyday life. These often borrow from the furniture and customs of the Public House and have included bar installations, newspapers, radio broadcasts, billboards and home brewed beer. Toby is the son of a publican and his favourite band is The Fall. Andrew spent a large chunk of his childhood in the Hartley Social Club and prefers Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band.
Read MoreDigital artist, filmmaker, creative producer, Kooj has worked with international artists such as Keith Piper and Shahidul Alam. Founder of artist collective Virtual Migrants and with his company Metaceptive, he artistically interweaves social justice, environment and diversity. Widely exhibited including Arnolfini (Bristol), ICA (London), internationally including San Diego, Paris, Toronto. Has won an award for digital arts connecting refugees with climate change, and produced / curated 'Footprint Modulation' exhibition on climate migration across five venues in Durham. Other climate arts work includes ‘Chamada From Chico Mendes’, interactive art combining documentary, poetry and sound from across the world; ‘Buy This’ evolving series of two-screen interactive video installations connecting consumerism displacement and environmental degradation.
Read MoreZoe is a precarious working, multidisciplinary artist from Yorkshire living in Brighton, with one foot in the conceptual, one foot in the visual and one foot in the everything in-between. Her work centres around live art and social practices with anything she creates having an inherent sense of unpredictability and ephemerality; as is life. Education underpins her work and she is passionate about radical pedagogy - especially through drawing and whisky - regarding any teaching role as a live, participatory happening and a vital part of her own practice and learning.
Read MoreArtist based in York, UK where I live and teach art at a Quaker school. Parallel to this I work in Newcastle - where I am a member of 'The Collective Studio' at Newbridge Project space- having just finished my MFA on the BxNU programme. I have worked as a DIY artist for the last 10 years- running a community print room, exbos, workshops, being part of collabs and collectives. My interests/research sit around: optimism-DIY-function-craft-textiles-friendship-collective work-collaborative-art and life-home, generous culture, DIY but DO IT TOGETHER. Insta: @jadelblood @yorkzinefest @hashtagdreamphone @boothamartdept
https://jadeblood.hotglue.me/?hibes/
Read MoreKaty Beinart is an artist, writer and educator, whose work engages with the public realm and includes installation, public art, performance and socially engaged projects. She has exhibited internationally and created public realm projects for a range of organisations. Her work explores links between material culture, memory, migration, identity and place. Her recent projects and exhibitions include My Life is but a Weaving at Gunnersbury Museum (2018-19), Saltways (2017-18) for the Canal & River Trust, Fabric of Faith (2016-18) for UCL, Brixton Museum (part of Anchor & Magnet) (2015-16), Imagined Geographies (with Rebecca Beinart, 2015) for the National Trust, Goute Sel at the 3rd Ghetto Biennale Haiti (2013), and Saltworks at the Lisbon Architecture Triennal (2013).
Read MoreAlix Rothnie is a curator and artist, and graduate of MSc Modern and Contemporary Art: History, Curating, Criticism at the University of Edinburgh. In addition to her own moving-image work, she has worked on social, archival and curatorial projects with a number of rural art spaces across Scotland including Deveron Projects in Aberdeenshire, and is currently artist in residence with Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum & Arts Centre on North Uist, and works as Film Town Programmer with Alchemy Film & Arts in the Scottish Borders.
cargocollective.com/alixrothnie
Read MoreBeatty Hallas is an artist who proposes purposeful, peripatetic and continuous humane activity. The causality of this will sometimes be overt, sometimes not. To enact in however intangible form, is to voice a commitment tied to responsibility. Her practice is flexible and responsive, informed by the world around her and looking toward optimism.
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