tracinghomes.squarespace.com / @a.foxwithsocks

Tracing home; a photobook series exploring how home exists through poetry, photography and paper. The books rewrite my personal relationship with the ephemeral home, inviting viewers to rewrite theirs. The materiality and nature of the work translates the experience of my multiple homes. This is predominantly done through the various locations, as the photographs included were taken in India, the UAE and the UK. The use of tracing paper, ink paper and canvas papers transpires ideas of generational and cultural transfers.

In response to my grandmother’s writings, my work uses text to express and relay my sentiments of home. As speculated by Ann Atwood – the words of poetry and image alike, act as windows for interpretation to the audience. Using poetry, the series abstracts the landscape of home in all its combined moments, to extend an invitation into a nameless narrative.

phoebearmstrongart.wixsite.com/mysite / @phoebe_armstrong_art

Through my paintings and digital works I explore the point where mundanity and existentialism converge, scrutinising the ordinary, lacklustre way in which we live our daily lives, when the very nature of being is nothing short of extraordinary. The collection ’Ordinary Chaos’ captures those moments of intrusive existential confusion that arise when performing a monotonous task or going about daily life, moments where you are suddenly interrupted with the absurdity of your own existence; why am I here? Why am I doing this? Why do we fall into a quotidian when we are free to do as we please?

'Connected'

artsteps.com/view / @gabryellejac

'Connected' is based around reliance on technology for human interaction. More than ever, as a result of the Covid- 19 pandemic, people are turning to screens for distraction and entertainment as a form of escapism. These paintings reflect a deteriorating sense of physical connection which has been replaced with a connection to devices. This work is created in oils on canvas.

ofunneazinge.com / @ofunneazinge / @OfunneAzinge / ofunneazinge@gmail.com

Ofunne Azinge is a Nigerian – British painter currently based in Leeds, United Kingdom. Over the past year, her work has developed from the documentation of black men and black masculinity in painting, to unravelling the socio-economic effects of Nigeria’s governance across the diaspora. Driven by Nostalgia and her complex upbringing, elements of her large-scale paintings continuously shift through generations and cultures, inviting the viewer to come closer and unravel the details.

‘Can You Read This?’

Through repetitive line drawing, I investigate the relationship between Meares-Irlen Syndrome / Visual Stress and Dyslexia. In Visual Stress the brain is unable to process the full spectrum of light when reading black text from a white background. Filtering out the problem wavelength makes text become much clearer, reducing strain and allowing the brain to process visual information correctly. This can be achieved through coloured overlays or tinted glasses.

Amongst the key theoretical ideas behind my work, I aim to reflect on my time spent in the education system as an undiagnosed dyslexic until the age of twenty-one. I was often mislabelled as disruptive, when I should have been receiving additional support for my difficulties / disabilities. As I progressed through school I found that doodling aided my ability to concentrate and retain information. Despite this I still received a negative reaction from teachers, being disciplined for doing so. I was told it was a form of ‘low level disruption’ and that ‘I couldn’t possibly be listening if I was drawing.’ I took my ‘doodles’ and began reworking them into more refined line drawings.

My series titled ‘Can You Read This?’ magnifies the experience of individuals with dyslexia experiencing visual stress as a result of reading. My drawings should be viewed as a ‘piece of text’ with educational benefits for the non-dyslexic viewer with purposefully wonky lines that are difficult to look at displaying an element of ambiguity.

@lovesexandsuffering / @the.naughty.peach

Georgina Bond’s practice is rooted within the study of sex, pleasure and the taboo. Using her personal interests of female sexual pleasure, stigmas associated with female sexual anatomy, presentation of sex as shameful, portrayal of BDSM and ‘kink’ in artwork and manners in which these are socially received.

She is a mixed media artist with a focus on producing moving image, photography and sculpture. The work mentioned is part of a visual work display, intended to immerse the viewer into the reflection of prejudices, beliefs and views around the discourse of sex and female pleasure

'Movements of Natural Wonders v5'

Photography, ink and water

ic281258.wixsite.com/website-1 / @bellelcarey

My practice explores mankind's tenuous relationship with the ocean. By investigating the sculptural qualities of water (one of the ocean’s abiotic features), I materialise the unknown and mystery which so often surrounds the biome, creating ‘other’ dreamlike worlds. As shown in Movements of 'Natural Wonders v5' (2021) (one photograph part of a photographic series), I embrace beauty, seducing the viewer with imagery only dreamt of.

To create this series, I took an open-ended approach. After dropping ink into water, I simply recorded the kinetic qualities which would normally go unseen, but which the ink highlighted. Giving water the space to transform the ink into immersive compositions left me very much aware of agency outside the human realm. Due to the ephemeral nature of the materials, preservation of a final product was a conceit. As such, 'Movements of Natural Wonders' (2021) documents the process of the materials interacting with each other, immortalising it via photography. By photographing the water’s movement, I am elongating the captured moment, creating a space for pause and reflection. By creating scenes where the imagination runs wild, I hope to re-engage the viewer with the ocean and hopefully establish some care as to how we treat it.

daisychadwickart.com

I create abstract paintings that focus on texture and colour. At its core, my practice explores nature and geological forms – more specifically, the areas of botany and geology in the landscape, and I consider these to be the fundamental aspects of nature. I create pieces that transcend the more traditional representations of nature through both abstraction and the use of relatively unconventional materials and methods. When I think of nature, I immediately think of the plethora of colours and textures that inhabit the landscape, and this is what I wanted to capitalise on in my work. Many people will only briefly admire the colour or form of a flower, overlooking the breath-taking intricacies of the folds of a petal or the deeply coloured veins running through them, but I base my pieces around those details that I feel best encapsulate the wonders of nature. ‘Flores Aestate’ is a depiction of this; the painting exudes liveliness and exuberance: bright colours streak and bleed across the surface, encompassing the floral textures that were previously bereft of colour, depicting the full bloom of the flowers.

'Big Drip'

intrinsictide.wixsite.com/intrinsictide / @boston_stump

Having studied media and music prior to this course, my practice uses various recording techniques to explore concepts surrounding our relationships with spaces. Although my concepts stem from an interest in reflections between environments and people, my work has become more concerned with the temporality of fleeting atmospheres, and using them to communicate philosophical and spiritual allegories for the developments of the inner self.

While searching landscapes for characteristics to frame I treat physical subjects as a foundation for which unplanned subtleties can reveal themselves around. This is often in the forms of changing light, background noises, wildlife and candid actions of passers by, although this has also involved performances and interviews. The process of journeying through temporal space in search of these elements is to be considered in terms of a reflection of the self, especially when in natural environments where characteristics of the moment can be read as symbols for the subconscious. At the heart of my work is an intention to bring meaning to the mundane, allowing a contemplative or cathartic experience. By use of visual framing and composition of events I hope to transform the material world into an internal exploration and bring the viewer closer to their own understandings.

@obey_the________

I have been experimenting with different means of conveying the psyche, broken down to its most universal constituents. I want my work to effectively allow people to place their psyches into perspective as a result of physically beholding a painted analogy representing thus, therefore bringing a higher degree of control and understanding as a result of something which could be described as attempting to become a mirror which corresponds to the integral nature of the whole, displayed before our primary sense organ. This allows not only for a small gain of possible control in integrating the vague structure but also acts as a starting point for a long process of self contemplation

'Male Fantasies'

In my practice I tend to explore the relationship between women and gig culture, focusing on the exclusion and harassment experienced in venue spaces, but due to Covid-19, these spaces ceased to exist. I decided to create a performative video piece addressing the current state of the music scene - virtual gigs taking place in bedrooms around the world, informed by concepts such as 'Bedroom Culture' and 'Sad Girl Theory'.

While creating the video, I intended to "let go" and experience complete safety and joy at a faux-gig as an audience member in my own room. I soon realised I had become the performer. I was obsessed with how I was presenting myself. This completely changed the intention and result of the work, and led me to focus more closely on the idea of false empowerment - the confusion caused by feeling sexy and confident but only under the confines of the male gaze. My final outcome was heavily informed by the famous 'Male Fantasies' quote penned by Margaret Atwood, and attempts to address this paradox head-on.

@lizzie.marie.art

Elizabeth’s most recent work is an exploration of her experience with avolition as a result of mental illness. Using yarn structures reminiscent of spider’s webs, her installations are intended to be representative of the way in which depression engulfs and traps the sufferer. Soft sculpture in her work is suggestive of the artist’s body and mind which is trapped within these webs, thus unable to escape or move whilst also inaccessible to the viewer. These confines placed upon the sculpture affect it as depression does the brain, wherein it prevents the normal function of the individual experiencing it.

@mundane_documentation

Arranged in formal grids, my painting collections portray the dynamic change in the rural setting of the Lake District. Utilising colour and pattern exaggerated from the landscape, each porcelain tile is unique in capturing moments in time, from an amble along the shore of Derwent Water. As a collective, the subtle lines and shapes create the typical forms of a natural panorama through trees, mountains, and bodies of water. The flow of water present in the lakes can be seen in the glossy sheen of the acrylic varnish coating each tile – the light from the sun reflecting and bending when in contact with both surfaces. With the work in situ, the viewer is encouraged to physically move along with their eyes, to experience each painting. This mirrors our fascination with flowing water that has an organic viscosity that is constantly flowing away from our view. My work became an isolated craft in a world where hands on connections were discouraged. Sat in front of the television crafting stamp size tiles from porcelain became a repetitive comfort in the chaos we were living through.

@arty_jodie

Jodie Cutting’s practice is an adaptation to the current circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic and social isolation. The photographs are primarily a documentation of life within the boundary of domestic space, the camera being a lens through which the relationship between the artist and their household is explored. The camera acts as an extension of the artist; it is a means to document the world through their eyes as they adopt the position of the photographer behind it. The camera also acts as a third presence, capturing personal moments between the artist and their subjects as they live through this unprecedented time and the household love and support shown towards one another in order to survive through it. Cutting’s documentation of these moments is an exploration of the restriction and isolation felt at this time, resulting in feelings of irritability, depression, and claustrophobia, and the extraordinary ways in which we live and cope through them.

sd286043.wixsite.com/teddydesouza / @teddys_art

At first glance, Teddy de Souza’s paintings appear to be aesthetically pleasing, opposing the dark actualities that they are concerned with, a contemporary climate devastated by human greed and carelessness. Her work represents the toxins present in the modern aerosphere that are both visible and invisible to the naked eye, showing the atmosphere as it truly is - a threatened sky.

Teddy’s paintings are informed by landscape motifs that progressively become more ambiguous. Through the use of Abstractionism, she was able to properly communicate her emotions onto the canvas. Along with this, colour has been used to bring out an emotional response from the spectator. Her palette is based off of the colour- coded Air Quality Index (AQI) that indicates the highest level of toxicity in the air. Her primary goal is to encourage a conversation around the capitalist society that has led to the destruction of our natural world.

Although her paintings are based off of her emotions, these feelings are governed by the knowledge of the capitalist industry that is leading to the destruction of our contemporary climate. Her paintings present the notion that, through capitalism, our vision of the world is polluted.

@tfe_art

My paintings are evidence to a series of processes that I have developed over the last two years and which find themselves bridging the gap between the action and field paintings of abstract expressionism through a contemporary and European sensibility. Working both as a rejection of - and having been influenced by - the seemingly ever-growing digital world, my works are not a step back into but rather a continuation of the history of paint. This history is one that I find to be more and more valuable as tactility, smell, touch, and true colour are slowly erased from everyday life. It is through this rejection of the digital that I see my practice as one of experimentation within the materiality of paint, with a focus on painting as being a sensory experience for both the creator and the perceiver.

'Woman as Monster'

I have evolved in my practice by exploring a range of domestic materials and the properties they possess. I categorise domestic materials as things found and used in the home, with an emphasis on products marketed towards women. I then deconstruct and repurpose these materials using them to form my (sometimes) unsettling but humours creatures. I consider the demonisation of women, the laborious nature of domestic work and motherhood and how undervalued this labour is, along with numerous other tasks assigned to women within our western society.

@abbyfrances_artworks

My pieces are informed by different interpretations of public information released by Boris Johnson and his aides surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. My artwork features bold but vague statements from Government campaigns to make ambiguous monoliths that invite viewers to form their own opinions of what the statement might represent. The focus on different interpretations of a message is influenced by public confusion during the initial weeks and months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when people sought to comply with new laws whilst not fully understanding the guidelines. The shadow plays an integral part in the artwork and exists to be the sinister and manipulative side of each message distributed, the opaque hidden within the supposedly transparent.

'Found and Lost' (age-restricted video)

@frankie_fraser_art / @frankiefraserart

Frankie Fraser explores personal aspects of her life and presents them to the viewer with the hope of igniting discussion within the individual and wider society. Through the use of varying representations she aims to aid viewers to gain insight into, and a recognition of, mental health issues by using certain aspects of her life as a beacon of learning.

'Found and Lost' 2021, explores the childhood traumas originating from her experience associated with her adoption; to connect the viewer with the lasting impact of the traumas through an immersive installation. Sensory representation of dual perspectives of the trauma of abandonment for the child and the loss and seeking for parents. Use of historic film and objects which are linked with memories of the era and events that caused the trauma to evoke the “real time” experience for the viewer.

@emmagarnerart

My practice is based upon the layering of imagery, through different mediums. My fascination in the unpredictability and exploration of woodland landscapes and animals is captured in my natural scenes.

I explore multiple techniques; in my series ‘Raven’ I physically cut out my drawings and get to play with compositions, before I place them over one another. Whereas in my series ‘Going on a walk’ I use experimental expressive brush strokes to represent how plants would outgrow each other in their natural habitats.

@rebeccagilbertfineart99

Rebecca Gilbert is a northern based artist, exploring and responding to her environment. Taking the mundane scenes of everyday and putting them to the forefront. Making an impact with colour and mark making is an integral part of her practice, to create a reworked viewing experience of the background that hides in plain sight.

@taliagordonart

My practice chronicles the minutiae of the current circumstances, in which I have created two series; 'The Vaccination' and 'Life Changing Events During Covid-19; Pregnancy In A Pandemic'. Although they are two separate series, they have one main factor in common - Covid-19. Personal stories feed into my body of work and include a level of authenticity and diagnostic insight. With the subject from 'The Vaccination' being me, I ensured an immediate direct response. In contrast to ‘Pregnancy In A Pandemic’ which shows the knock-on effects of Covid-19 and how it has affected normal life-changing events that happen when there isn’t a pandemic, like childbirth and pregnancy. My current practice goes against the conventional norms of resolved works being "complete", as parts of my pieces take on linear outlines that lack detail. I undertake an editing process in which I have had to be very decisive for each individual image. My careful decision-making emphasises specific areas of my drawings which gives considered and more resolved attention.

'Wiping Away the Illusion' and 'Pose'
Oil on canvas
25"x25" and 23.8"x17.9"

'Wiping Away the Illusion' and 'Pose' are extracted from a four-part series of paintings surrounding my views around gender stereotyping. As a young activist my work aims to educate my audience on gender through the performance of drag. I converse this through the formation of my paintings in the hope of defeating the ignored negative connotations which are written into our society affecting the way people are still being treated.

@hollysherbert

If I were to think of life and experience in the form of a painting, it would be a painting with contrasting marks and rhythm, with explosions of large strokes and implosions of small blots, cut through by harsh lines, some of which become blended and scuffed. It would start off as a plain canvas and, as you lived your life, it would fill up with splats, washes, strokes, scumbles, sprays and lines. Each thing that happened to you would influence the canvas, be it large or small, seemingly important or unimportant. This would result in a painting with many twists and turns and pulses of activity/inactivity. I want my memories to be realised in the form of strokes and contours and come together on a canvas to create a visual expression of experience. I want to make a tangible collection of emotions on a surface that exhibits loneliness, excitement, calmness, chaos, and all the other things that stem from human experience, hopefully achieving a connection with others too.

@xxkaty_artxx

I have taken photos of buildings around Preston and am creating my drawings from these. I have been making digital drawings of buildings and landscapes using Adobe Illustrator, using layers and blocks of shapes to construct the image, and a drawing tablet for the more intricate parts such as shop logos and detailed architecture.

Most of my work to date has been based on building exteriors but I have started creating interior based pieces including large buildings such as shopping malls and train stations.

My work has been affected by the current lockdown world, as many of the buildings in them have shutters closed or are dark inside, and places such as shopping malls are completely empty when usually they would be bustling.

theresashon.wixsite.com/profile / @_theresahon_

Sung Lin Hon (Theresa) is an artist whose central concerns are light, shades, surface, solitude and ambiguity. Her practice explores silence in a painterly way.

Theresa’s work shows her vision of light and darkness. With a minimal palette, her work pictures and articulates the simultaneous presence and absence that objects suggest. Her artwork tends to reflect her concerns and shows the transformation of emotion within production.

Her art practice showcases introverted interpretation of shadows and aims to engage viewers to interpret the reading of the painting with their backgrounds. Her paintings reflect her concern in illustrating light and shows the transformation of the emotion within production. Her work remains silently humble and aims to be interpreted differently according to the viewer's aesthetic and personal interpretation.

Her practice explores a wide range of subjects surrounding her theme, for instance, nature, interior objects and abstract shadows formed.

'No Room to Feel'

Digital paintings, displayed in a virtual space on virtual screens

@maihoodart

In a time where the world outside remains inaccessible, the spaces inside of our own heads are more significant than ever. My paintings are informed by the chaos and irrationality of the anxious mind within a generation cursed with the world at their fingertips, amplified by the worldwide drastic change in our way of life. The paintings are created as a reflection of my own thoughts, using abstraction and colour in a way that produces almost a surreal environment as a personification of the mind. My use of digital media in the style of physical painting is in response to the impact of the digital world in today’s society, and the increase in the virtualisation of everyday things due to the pandemic, also leading me to create a virtual space to exhibit the works. My full exhibition is available to view on my website.

@jeynikkita

With my body of work, I am exploring the concept of identity as a performance. Human beings are a complex string of ideas - constantly changing, learning, identifying and re-identifying ourselves. However, we find the need to portray ourselves as readable characters, a defined set of traits. We choose from pre-existing roles and fit ourselves into it. We then make constant efforts to perform the role of this character, consequently hiding our authentic self. With painting, I am portraying characters who have found comfort in their imagined identities.

Fig. 1 the bushes. No 24, watercolour on cotton hot press paper
Fig. 2 the bushes No.31, oil on canvas, 60cmx56cm

My work presents itself as a metaphor that highlights humanity’s relationship with nature and the social desire to reject the natural world as part of our being and, instead, attempting to distance ourselves from it. The work reflects the beauty in growth and freedom whilst also showing humanity’s desire to create rigid and synthetic forms creating a more balanced composition attempting to reinstate the value in connecting with the freedom that nature brings.

My practise is routed in queer culture, I aim for my art to always have a cause and a comment on society and queer life. This series of work was influenced by the domestic quilt and floor covering making culture mainly in America. The rugs created are made by ‘rug hooking’ or as it is known now, punch needling rather than with machines. The images present in the rugs are inspired by digital drawings of queer spaces and the items that are most prevalent in these spaces. The final work displayed here is a hybrid of craft and fine art, demonstrating fine art images through craft design. The other work in this series remains in the realm of queer spaces, an exploration into what makes queer spaces queer and about those who inhabit them.

joannekelly360.wixsite.com/artist / @jokellyart

As my interest and confidence to address politics has grown, I have used my art practice to investigate symbols associated with revolution, resistance and power. Through casting I have rendered objects purposeless; being completely non-functional, they are merely representations that evoke cultural associations. A shoe but not fit for a foot, a gun but with no use of bullets. As well as their ‘otherness’ or materiality, their differences of form are important to acknowledge; the women’s shoe being softly curved can be regarded as feminine which contrasts the angularity and straight, sharp lines of the gun.

Objects have been interesting to relate to feminism as the objectification of women is a major issue in a patriarchal society. The image I have chosen to exhibit depicts two subjects that I have chosen to slip-cast using ceramics. I enjoy the way that the gun is resting on the heel of the shoe, almost propping it up; this leverage helps represent the inequality of genders. It is interesting seeing an accessory of war and a women’s fashion accessory positioned together but I believe this oddness incites political significance.

My work is the product of process driven activity. It is predominately based around abstracted forms and pattern making in a variety of mediums. I have recently developed my own studio space, to facilitate bronze casting and steel fabrication.

'China’s One-Child Policy (1979-2016)'

These hand-sized silhouettes are a visualisation of a Chinese birth mother, in the moment of departure from her daughter’s life, walking away into mystery. She is void of any distinguishing features, her body is composed of demolished Shanghai ‘Nail Houses’ and looming high-speed urbanisation, her identity and environment are irreversibly erased.

Handling these delicate papercuts is not nearly so fragile and fraught as examining the subject of child abandonment in China in the 90s. The chrysanthemum, with its incongruous associations of beauty and prosperity, rests over her head, just as the daughter she gives up may remain in her memory, and her hopes that she may grow and thrive as part of another family, in America perhaps, or the UK?

sm283705.wixsite.com/smcfineart / @smcfineart

My current body of work began as an exploration of how image sharing culture in the 21st century has interrupted the way art is consumed. Envisioning how my pieces could interact with an audience led to my investigation of how image sharing platforms and the ‘poor image’ can affect the interpretation of my work. I use the female form as the subject of my work, creating photo composites that include elements of my own body along with appropriated imagery of the female form throughout art history. Reducing these forms into their most basic state through image transferring enabled me to create a more ‘human’ essence in my final imagery. This comments on the nature of digital influence when looking at both the representation of the female body and art consumption in the 21st century.

@imercerart

As I’ve been studying and photographing my surrounding environment I began to think of more personal spaces that exist within my day to day dwelling, looking more closely on my dwelling space by using a narrative from my everyday life to create a more autobiographical image.

This digital painting is representative of my shower being too hot, leaving me feeling like a lobster boiling in my own juices. Combining this feeling of discomfort and turning it into something absurd allows a bizarre questions to arise... is the lobster huge or the bathroom scaled down? How did the lobster turn on the shower with no hands?

'Why Me?'
@j.l.m_art

My 'Dear You,' (2021) series is a sculptural collection of small glazed ceramic figures that I have made during my journey of realisation of the drastic change in mine and other’s mental health over the past year. I had decided that the impact of my mental health had had on me had become too big of an issue to ignore and was something I felt I had to include in my work. The poses of each piece are ones that I believe almost everyone will have experienced at some point in their lives. I would like people to find a sense of comfort and understanding or even learn something new with this series of work as never before has mental health been so important to understand and needed to be brought into the limelight.

'Boiling Milk And The Ukraine Fixed Scar Of The Grandfather'

110cmx140cm, oil on canvas

megan-milner.com / @megansofiamilner

Megan Milner’s unflinching oil paintings are primarily concerned with embellishing and fictionalising the little-known information about her Great-Grandad’s Ukrainian upbringing. Harnessing the chaos of the past into a narrative of imagined ‘history’, she constructs scenes through use of family told story, folklore, historical photojournalism, archive photography, Ukrainian folk art, and iconography: working within the landscape of an “older” Ukraine.

Layered painterly techniques and strangely jarring compositional devices expose the way the paintings are that of fantasy; dripping and thinned oil paint keeps the viewer focused on flatness of canvas, reminding of the ways these individual elements have been combined in order to create illusions of real life. The fractured narrative incidents are held together by a unity of painted mark and bright use of unnatural colour, creating place that appears dreamt or remembered, rather than observed or actual. The paintings have been heavily influenced by Fauvism, Post Modernism, and the Byzantine. The compression of histories within her practice, both contextually and visually, have wider sociological value from a contemporary standpoint when considering them against the technological advances of the internet, where everything can exist simultaneously on one screen.

rmona.co.uk / @ra_____mona

The work that Rachel creates is intentionally absurd and macabre; seeking to maintain a level of ambiguity and openness. Conflicted by the corporeal fleshy physicality of our bodies, forces of nature and the neatly organised, constructed world in which we try to fit ourselves and its impact on the world around us, her work seeks to blur the borders between earth, body and technology; their relationships to one another and deals with themes of post-humanism and the Anthropocene.

She combines the use of a range of surplus commodity building materials, found and domestic objects and her own body to evoke speculative fiction and create new mythologies. She creates a fictional narrative centred on humankind's relationship to water, blurring the boundaries between time, space, the body, nature and technology. Designed as a conveyor of warning or foreboding, it transports a dream-like state of fusion between the organic and non-organic into our current reality. Anthropomorphised aqueducts sleep; frozen in time, circuited shells of bodies sway; washed ashore, fleshly debris litters the environment; wistfully reminiscing, metamorphose organisms mingle with synthetic members; seemingly symbiotic, each holding the other close into the longest of sleeps.

@en.arts

My work looks at the meaning of flowers, historically and in today’s terms - we don’t send the same intricate messages in the form of bouquets anymore, but the sentiment is still the same. All of my work is photographed and drawn directly from bouquets my family received during lockdown as bereavement/“thinking of you” gifts.

madelinenoble.myportfolio.com / @madelinenoble.fineart

My practice is oriented around childhood memory and producing ambiguous paintings that express my own experiences. I isolate family photographs that I find nostalgic and use digital software to reimagine these moments in time, creating shadows or ghosts of the past. I aim to make work that is initially intangible and unclear, but remains familiar enough to trigger feelings of recognition for the observer. Motivated by universal human experiences, I see my paintings as a way to form connections with people I have never met; as a shared experience between strangers over mutually familiar memories. It is this connection formed between strangers and my paintings that I find exciting. I obscure the figures in my pieces which leaves room for viewers to project themselves into my paintings, encouraging reflection of their own histories. Each painting is intended to capture the fleeting shadows cast by the flash of a camera, the residual traces of a memory isolated by the photograph and erased through my reinterpretation of it.

@meganoliver_fineart

Megan Oliver’s practice focuses on the current events taking place in the world, being notably an environment and population that has been plunged into a global pandemic, which without a doubt has had adverse effects across every nation as lives have changed, been put on hold. Control, restriction, imprisonment, lack of motivation and deep subconscious thinking to name a few are terms that have influenced her practice. She creates drawings intending to present the relationship concerns between oneself and her environment, depicting thoughts and feelings which arose during lockdown, whereas as a nation we have been restricted to only our domestic living Spaces. Megan’s practice and drawings are expressed through observational studying within her environment, as she has come to realise the impact and personal value of the major and minor parts to her day to day routine, which has become a more repetitive experience. She manages this through working in a specific allocated time block.

aniamariart.tumblr.com / @aniamariart

"Memories are patterns inscribed in the connections between the millions of neurons in your brain."

The abstract Home vs Home series focused on building colour palettes from a variety of childhood photos. After extracting my palettes made up of four colours, they were combined and blended using acrylic paint. Each memory has its unique pattern, they may fade a little, blend or merge over time like my pieces, however, they are still there. Each colour in this blended piece represents a unique part of my life with either my first memories in the UK or my first memories in Poland. This series has become a huge aspect of my practice in exploring my own life, and experience as a third culture kid rather than looking at other individuals’ experiences.

@apex.artstyle

My practice relates to the subject matter of still life, informed by my identity within the eastern culture. My influences have ranged from autobiographical art to Orientalism as well as painting and drawing. This has enabled me to involve further hybridity within my work, from an introspective and sociological perspective, by thinking of my own Indian heritage and place in society.

I initially explored spiritual objects inspired by Hinduism, festivals and personal life. I aimed to recreate my observations with emphasis on colour harmony, through working in mixed media with acrylic paint and mehndi. I searched in my own household to find artefacts which relate to my childhood and eastern culture. Then I took photos of plates, vessels, candle holders used in Diwali as well as traditional statues of religious deities. I also chose to document fruits and flowers which naturally grow in warmer climates and this has expanded my interest in food and spices.

Still life continues to be an integral part of my art practice; it is a way for me to display conceptual ideas and I want the viewer to experience my work as a contemplative, ceremonial image.

@hp_fine_arts

My practice focuses mainly on the expressive potential colour palette and viewpoint can have on achieving certain emotions within a painting, as well as portraying an uncanny familiarity to modern day life. Borrowing images found online depicting mundane, passing moments in life, alongside self portraits I have composed, I depict the notion of feeling physically and mentally trapped within a repetitive routine. Taking advantage of my own experiences of how the current pandemic has affected my everyday life, I am able to create and give a personal and true to life point of view, accurately representing real events.

'Hello/Goodbye'
Acrylic on plywood
@samuelreesprice

Samuel Price’s practice explores themes of power, unity and individuality within a digital generation. He draws from the history of European portraiture, placing his subjects within empowering frameworks. While his portraits reference the past, they are grounded in the present; they are a response to the feeling of powerlessness that is prevalent during the current pandemic. He aims to make uplifting work, focusing on the positive ways contemporary people are able to stay connected, and celebrating progressive notions of identity.

jesserendles.wixsite.com/website / @jesserendlesart

My practice focuses on the ideas and notions around the human relationship with objects; the different ways we can engage with them and the unique ways they can stimulate our senses to create a positive impact on our lives. Using soft sculpture, primarily, my aim is to create a comforting and calming experience, taking inspiration from aspects of sensory play therapy. Physical interaction is the main concern of my practice, and I believe the role of the viewer is just as important as the work itself. I want my work to be felt, touched, and experienced. It is not there to just be looked at; I also want it to fill the purpose of Interactivity. The materiality of my work ranges from sculpture to sculpture. I enjoy finding new materials as the possibilities excite me, and keeps my work engaging. Although I do not have a set materiality, all my works share a common ground and that is soft sculpture. I focus on different forms of texture and how particular materials can help us engage our tactile (touch) sense. Some materials I have used in my sculptures are synthetic stuffing, cotton fabric, plush velvet fabric and yarn. All personally to me, soft and comforting materials to touch and engage with.

'Little Paul'

@safoography

Li li li li little pool The chicken came to drink water But fell into the little pool! This one saved him. (1)
This one covered him (2)
Someone gave him bread (3)
The same one gave him water to drink (3)
And someone said. "Who threw the chicken into the little pool?" (4)
This one said, "Me! Me: The big-headed one!" (5)

Lili Lili Hosak is an Iranian nursery rhyme told to me as a child. My artistic practice is concerned with personal cultural identity, storytelling, and language, culminating in a sculptural adaptation of the Lili Lili Hosak tale. I intend to draw together a fusion of binaries into this fantasy narrative – my work is informed by themes within a binary belief system of which the world is often limitingly framed: The East Vs The West, Modern Vs Tradition, Forbidden Vs Temptation, Religion Vs Secularism, Good Vs Evil. These social constructs also reflect how I see my own identity as consisting of many dualities.

annabellerichmondwright.com/work/2021 / @arw.art

Annabelle Richmond-Wright’s multidisciplinary practice revolves around the phenomena of the human condition. Often Annabelle will begin with an idea inspired by the observations and encounters of life and utilises materials or found objects based on its materiality and contextual language it speaks. Her latest work, in 'Harder Faster More More More, 2021' utilises a kinetic snakeskin conveyor belt within a charred wood cubic frame in an installation of a moving image film and various fragmented human forms which articulate the disharmony between human consciousness and the sociopolitical concerns of capitalism, coronavirus, and digital technologies.

jenroper.co.uk

Exploring social awkwardness, I work from memory to depict past awkward social encounters. Painting diaristic documentations of being an awkward person; capturing uncomfortable situations that replay over in my mind. My ideas draw from awkward feelings surrounding the uncomfortable social environments of everyday life; expressing the pain you can feel when you are at the centre of an uncomfortable situations. I work to portraying a lack of knowing how to behave or react when witnessing pratfalls and also not knowing how to ignore the event. It’s all these internal battles that allow these memories to live on. Unconcerned with beauty or aesthetics, I paint to capture a likeness and embrace how the memory is not accurately depicted on the canvas.

soundcloud.com/michaelsangstersoundart / combatprosthetics@gmail.com

Michael Sangster is an artist and composer from the North East of Scotland who currently resides in Leeds. Beginning as a photographer, Sangster’s work has consistently attempted to capture the dissociated nature of growth and relationships through photographing the incidental. With its genesis in documentation, the work moved towards an abstract collection of images relating to the dysphoric nature of contemporary existence, depicting growth through a personal aesthetic anthropology. His work is currently centred around sound collage, which naturally evolved from a spiralling photographic practice and maintains the lo-fi aesthetic of the early visual work. High fidelity audio is foregone in favour of portability, with an emphasis given on the ability to collect and repurpose audio. The content of the work speaks to the notion of a life made up of minute experiences, viewed from far enough away so as to almost go unnoticed. The work itself is the infinite expansion of those experiences. Though highly personal and drawing influence from literary themes of the existential, Sangster’s work seeks to communicate. Its primary function is an attempt to bridge a gap between the artist and the audience which perhaps words cannot.

'Gender (In A New World)'

danlsmith.myportfolio.com / @danlsmith_photography

'Gender (In A New World)', is a photographic series which expresses ideas of gender performance and coding. Focusing on theories of ambiguity and absurdism, balancing the intriguing and attractive aesthetic my photography holds with more surrealist imagery. Creating recognisable images, that are removed from their original context and resembled in a more ambiguous manner; they are simultaneously familiar yet alien. The series distorts and reflects the reality of societal issues on gender performance, with the images centring around the creation of insular, exaggerated spaces. Through these, I create my own perception of a perfect ‘new world’ in which the performance of gender is ridiculed by reflecting expectations in a hyperbolic manner.

Depicted above is a sole image from each gendered space, with the respective model being carefully crafted to illustrate either a hyper feminised, hyper masculinised or androgynous representation of the human experience. My intention was to create images that spark conversations about gender and, eventually, result in a place where gender is not restricted to a binary; ‘a new world’.

@oliviasfineart_

My practice focuses on the art of the sublime, to create an experience that engages the viewer's sense of what is beyond the landscape. I have captured the essence of a scene without fixating on too much detail, using simple colour and shape to express the energy of life and nature. This finds the everyday beauty in the landscape of my home, through a lack of human presence providing a moment of peace in aspects of suburban areas. I used a combination of brushwork and palette knives, painting on recyclable found objects. The objects used, raise awareness for ecological issues and material consumption. My paintings show my perspective and experience of the suburban and forested area I walk daily in my village. With the peaceful emptiness I try to replicate into my paintings, my intent is to enable the viewers to imagine the quiet scene created, captured by familiarity from a recognisable relationship to the paintings without ever being present.

@erin.smyth.art

This image is part of a series entitled 'The Pursuit of the Perfect Breath.'

It consolidates and further explores my avid interest of ‘where’ we as humans breathe in our bodies and more poignantly my concept of visually interpreting and realising the essence of the perfect breath.

I coloured clay with pigment and then hand molded a series of clay sculptures.

Followed by a chase of photographing, videoing, projecting and looping images with use of moving light and a fog generator. A researched and universally intended breathing guide was also developed. To further envision my vision of a sensory immersed exhibition-

‘Try to focus all of your attention on your breath.
Your breath in and your breath out.
Try to do this in silence.
Become aware of where you can feel the breathing sensations within your body.
It will be normal for your mind to tend to wander, just try to come back to the awareness of your breathing.
Allow yourself to breathe in and out whilst gently absorbing this image.
Remember that your ability to be aware of your breathing is with you always.’

@muddy.moji

I am an artist, collector, walker, and archivist. My practice is the process of ‘collecting’ my daily walks. I collect textures by using charcoal rubbings or contact prints pressed into the ground. I collect the route I walk using a GPS tracked app on my phone and then hand drawing the journey. I collect imagery by taking photos on my phone. I collect my words by writing them down in a journal straight after the walk. I collect my thoughts by speaking aloud during the walk and recording them. Finally, I collect my personal experiences of the walk such as what I saw, heard, smelt, or touched which are often documented as drawings.

The experience of lockdown restrictions and exercise being limited to one hour a day has impacted my walking practice. I have placed restrictions on my practice to reflect the fact that my walks are being limited to one hour, such as controlling the size of the paper I work on (60x60mm) and limiting the tools that I work with.

My aim is to collect physical memories and translate them into an archive that I can share with others as an artwork.

The focus of my work over the last two years of university has essentially been documenting my own personal journey of self discovery. At the start of these years I was unsure of what direction I wanted my drawing and art practise to take, I was unsure of what direction I wanted my future career path to take, and where I wanted my life to lead. Subsequently, of course, a global pandemic was thrust upon us. As was even more uncertainty, not only for myself but for almost everyone I know, and everyone they know. Like many others, I had no choice (and all the time) to look inside myself and discover what I was truly passionate about, which is when I came upon the (now obvious) fact that mine is tattoos and tattooing. I started getting tattooed at 15 and am now, although not as much as I would like, covered in them. As a young woman I have seen first hand the stigma held against women with tattoos compared to a man with tattoos, and the eradication of these stigmas has been a catalyst for my work over my second and third years of uni. This, along with the celebration of self expression and acceptance being the culminating themes of this project: Women In Tattoos. This explores the hardships that women have felt throughout this pandemic, using them as poignant examples to show how emotions and struggles can be documented on the body as a means of accepting the past and being able to move forwards, onwards and upwards.

@jessicaswift_fineart

After being diagnosed with dyslexia, Swift struggled with the idea of possession when it came to writing about her work, and wanted to turn this into a positive, rather than a struggle. In her most recent sculpture series 'Possession', she made work that seemed pointless and radiated uselessness, as its only purpose was to be installed and seen by the public. The idea of making work that only she understood was incredibly appealing, and pairing this with her own opinions of uselessness and possession was the perfect match.

Wanting the audience to value her process, she left marks, dents and scratches so that the observer can ponder her process and understand the skill used in each piece. Texture has always been a very important factor for Swift, as she learns best from visuals and being hands on. Her contemporary pieces see a single large hole in each sculpture, allowing the audience to not only look at her work from the outside, but inside as well. Not hiding the supports used during the manufacturing enforces the value of process and how she wants to highlight this to the public, rather than hide it to allow for a ‘perfectly refined’ finished piece.

'high tide'

300cmx90cm, oil on canvas

@kayvanblerk

Kay van Blerk's practice explores her subjective relationship with the sea and nature in relation to its overwhelming existence. Residing on the coast of Cornwall, she uses the local seascapes as her source of inspiration while drawing upon the concepts of the Sublime and the Numinous. van Blerk makes sense of the thoughts and feelings felt when submerged in a seascape using painting, photography, and poetry. While aiming to immerse the viewer and create a space to pause - connect in the moment – a raw connection between the artist and the act of painting is explored. Through captured moments of colour and brushstrokes, these transcendental experiences encountered with the sea are embodied in her paintings. Scale, colour, and composition are important elements in the abstraction found in her practice. Creating large scale paintings, these elements are carefully considered to transform the space the work is in and evoke feelings of submergence.

@tillyward.art

My work explores the beauty within decay, investigating the process of erosion and deterioration on both synthetic and natural materials, interested in this interaction both visually and theoretically. I work to understand and analyse surfaces textures of unfamiliar materials and exhibit them in a way that provokes a thoughtful response from my viewer. My practice questions how impactful humans are to a space, and how powerful nature is to ourselves, investigating how each affects the surroundings that both encounter, my work displays how nature adjusts and responds to our disregard. I enjoy the process of nature physically breaking down and altering objects that are unfamiliar to them, deteriorating synthetic fabrics and the textural reaction that this results in. I surround myself within a scene which has been exposed, becoming subjective and reactive to my surroundings, a process which allows me to investigate and analyse how surfaces have reacted to elements such as: weathering, human interaction or use from animals/insects. All my theoretical thinking correlates with my interest in decay and decomposition, the natural progression of life.