2024 Archive

Adrian Westgarth is a sculptor from North Yorkshire working with live, mobile forms and care-centered processes. He replicates lines of movement of human joints in softwood, clay, concrete, and mushrooms, exploring limitations to this movement as experienced by chronically ill bodies, and understanding the expanse of illness to the body as mycelium is to fungus.

Amelia Pethullis is a mixed media artist, currently working with sculptural photographic installation. At present the focus of her works is an exploration of ideas relating to ‘the self’ within self-portraiture. Making works which obscure the representation of the body to a vague abstraction of warmth and flesh.

Amy Martina's practice focuses on her experiences of mental illness and family life, and how the interaction of these two spheres can be conveyed to the viewer through installations of both abstract and figurative work. She builds large double-sided paintings, exploring colour and contour, and generates series of abstract drawings.

Charlie Anne Laidler is an interdisciplinary artist, using research-based practice and found material to interrogate inhabitancy and connecting forms. Visible, concealed and immaterial dimensions cross over between natural, cultural, spatial and social networks. They broach concealed, material and symbolic aspects of everyday life through presence, wonder, complexity and rhizomatic systems. 

My practice is informed by the vast, untamed landscapes and ever-changing

skies of Yorkshire, my paintings employ expressive techniques and a vibrant colour palette to capture the dynamic energy and depth of the natural world that surrounds me.

With a keen eye for detail my work seeks to convey the freedom, tranquillity and awe that one experiences in the presence of nature. Through each brushstroke, I aim to evoke a sense of connection with the environment and invite viewers to pause, reflect, and appreciate the subtle nuances of the world around us.

Ellie Wood is a painter who confronts the urban misogyny through layers of figuration and abstraction within her mixed media collages. Exploring archived narratives, she unearths the subtle yet pervasive manifestation of gender-based discrimination. Each piece is a testament to resilience, inviting viewers to confront uncomfortable truths envision a more equitable future.

Emily Folta is a moving image artist who plays with synthetic objects that mimic the properties of the physical. Using vivid colours and simple form, the work is cast into a space that the viewer is invited to share with the work. She uses found material to create movement that break up the dimensions of the moving image and reality to create ephemeral reflections.

Emily Willis is a painter and sculptor who examines classism in dining through Michelin meals and sculpted objects such as pillows that symbolise cultural narratives. In her recent work, titled ‘Scran,’ Willis challenges perceptions of authenticity versus materialism, spotlighting beloved English fare to prompt critical reflection on societal values.

Hannah Nevis, a Textile-based artist, finds inspiration in the ordinary moments of a woman’s daily life, delving into themes of identity, authenticity, and femininity. Through her work, she repurposes discarded items, shedding light on the overlooked traces left behind by a woman’s daily routines, often unseen by others.

Jessica Elsayghe’s practice is multidisciplinary, focusing on assemblages, digital collage and large scale installations. Her process involves scanning and photographing found material and the marks generated by them. These images are scanned to create digitalised collages exposing, the substance behind everyday material, utilising effects of layering, merging and fragmenting imagery. Jessica repurposes these collages into manipulated, large prints to site specific locations where she utilises the intricacies of the surrounding environment to enhance the texture created from the collected materials.

Lee Oakley is a multi-media artist combining performance, photography, collage, and installation to stretch at the boundaries of image-making. With a clear aesthetic theme to their work, Oakley uses the body as a recognisable yet re-imagined language, referencing the re-shaping that takes place between the body’s health and its deterioration.

Lewis Ripley is an artist based in York who’s work utilises traditional techniques and subject matters, such as figurative works in oil paint, clay sculpture and print. Taking inspiration from centuries of academic art, with the human being as a focal point, to create contemporary pieces of art that are both thoughtful and emotive.

Lucy Farrar is a multidisciplinary Fine Artist, specialising in time based, flash photography that captures the bodies engagement with intuitive movements and time amongst both mundane and manipulated environments. To reactivate the spontaneity and playfulness of an event, whilst providing a candid, unfiltered perspective of multiple body types, I print the documents onto large scale satin photography paper, working into intricate nuances with dots using heavy body acrylic paint.

As a painter, Megan Malone aims to connect with the audience through floral imagery and colour language to enquire into questions of God's character. Within the exhibition, the conversation between the painting and the sculpture seeks to express gratitude towards the metaphysical space of 'home' that we feel within the presence of the environment and one another. 

Paul Johnson is an installation artist who uses his work to narrate his own personal experiences. In this piece Paul explores what it is like to navigate the world as a queer person by recreating a well-recognised queer space with the themes of discomfort and erasure at the forefront.

Sam Keane is a fine artist currently finishing their degree at York St John University. Their research primarily focuses on feminism and the working class in art through history, theory and their practice. Using a range of different mediums to explore these ideas and reinterprets them within art works. Currently the working hand sculptures disguise cheap materials as expensive metals, a metaphor for the experience of the working-class artist within the gallery and the art-world. Sam endeavours to explore these theories and methods further. 

Sarah Percival is a printmaker specialising in large scale etchings. They navigate the relationship between line, language, and the printed page, inviting the viewer into the new plane caused by the indentation of the plate into the page. The materiality of the print documents their experience and process.

Tia Smith is an artist who uses their own childhood experiences to dictate their artistic expression. This piece, isolation, reflects their experience with borderline personality disorder, highlighting the struggle with a constant entanglement of emotions. Smith hopes through their artwork she can illuminate the experience of living with BPD for a wider audience.

Tom Hardwick is an artist working at the intersection of textiles and computation. Embracing traditional fiber arts, Hardwick processes data through the manipulation of yarns, honouring the gendered history of computation and the intrinsic connection between intellectual and physical activity. Hardwick works to rematerialize and rehumanise information, questioning the way data is treated in a digital world.

Wendy Clarke is a multidisciplinary artist based in Yorkshire, specialising in the creation of abstract works that explore the essence of organic forms. As an emerging artist at university, her artistic experiments have led to the creation of unique forms and pieces that evoke a sense of timelessness and nostalgia.

Adam Zawadzki is an aerial photojournalist interested in the complex relationship between words and pictures which shapes our understanding of and interaction with visual culture. More specifically, the dialogue of creative writing and digital imagery that together presents unique perspectives from its interdisciplinary nature – to derive meaning from artistic intelligence.

Wish You Were Here? captures the hidden flaws in idyllic scenes through a nine-month photographic journey using a pinhole camera. Utilising contaminated seawater from England's coastlines, each unique analogue image has been exposed the unseen toxicity lurking behind picturesque view, the tainted seawaters from sewage dumped by local Utility companies.

Helen Raisbeck is an interdisciplinary artist concerned with material interactions.  Working at the intersection of phenomenology, ecology and the Anthropocene, the work interrogates her lived experience through the concept of waste.  Using experimental material processes, the familiar is re-presented as unfamiliar in a combination of painting, printing, sculpture and photography.