_1215_fine_art_catalogue

12
15
3 years,
72 artists,
1095 days.
12-15 documents the works of seventy two emerging
artists from the 2015 Northumbria Fine Art Degree
Show. Edited by the students, this stand-alone
publication is a testament to the achievements and
ambitions of the year group – a comprehensive
collaborative conversation of progressing
contemporary art practice.
With the inclusion of short articles, artist interviews
and exhibition reviews, 12-15 provides a platform for
voices and perspectives, communicating a context of
contemporary art and visual culture not only to a
professional and academic audience, but to all
interested readers.
Capturing the refined expression of three years of
undergraduate study, 12-15 celebrates the innovation
and dedication of a new generation of artists,
curators, film-makers, painters, performers,
photographers, printmakers, sculptors and writers.
We would like to thank all contributors who enabled
the realisation and production of this publication.
The Editorial Team
Please be aware that this publication contains content of an explicit nature.
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Contents
Artists
Articles
Oliver Amphlett 8
Louise Angus 10
Sylwia Bak 12
Nadia Raphaella Baldini 14
Hannah Baldwin 16
Kate Errington 62
Samantha Furze 64
Kimberley Gallon 66
Emily Gordon 68
Dean Hall 72
Lucy Moss 120
Kerrie Nacey 122
Nurain Omar 124
Katinka Stampa Orwin 126
Sarah Jane Owen 128
‘Artists Looking Forward’
by Thomas Zielinski & Emma Cole 6
‘At the beginning’ by Alicia Carroll 22
‘Continuous Creation’ by Lucy Moss 38
‘Perpetual Year Planner’
by Rachael Macarthur 54
Elizabeth Daisy Bedford 18
Sarah Horsman 74
Charlotte Pattinson 130
‘Yellow’ by Frankie Casimir 70
Charlotte Belsten 20
Julie Louise Bemment 24
Chloe Jane Bradley 26
Samuel Hurt 76
Jenny Irvine 78
Sophie Jarvis 80
Josephine Peel 132
Samantha Potts 134
Alexandra Pywell 138
‘The Death of Traditional Art Galleries
and Museums’ by Emily Matthews 86
‘Resurrecting Spectres from WW II in an
Intensely Private Drama’ by Chris Welton 98
Hayley Emma Brookes 28
Francesca Brown 30
Laura Brown 32
Samuel Curtis Johnson 82
Laura Joyce 84
Tommy Keenan 88
Lotti Reid 140
Rachael Scorer 142
Nancy Seary 144
‘An Introduction to Feminism’
by Melissa Macpherson 104
‘Ctrl-Alt-Space’ by Julie Bemment
and Kinnetico 118
Jessica Carmichael 34
Alicia Carroll 36
Francesca Casimir 40
Sophie Keith 90
Kinnetico 92
Michiyo Kurosawa 94
Patrick Joseph Stansby 146
Joanna Street 148
David Thirlwell 150
‘Skateboarding as Artistic Practice’
by Euan Lynn 136
‘The Stranger LARP’
by Visible Psychology Inc 152
Hannah Charlton 42
Emma Cole 44
Rosa Langran 96
Dominic Lockyer 100
Murray Thompson 154
George Unthank 156
‘Northumbria Fine Art Auction 2015’
by Samantha Potts 172
Warren Connor 46
Frankie Long 102
Samuel Joshua Walker 158
Angharad Croft 48
Euan Lynn 106
Rebecca Watson 160
Sharlie Cullen 50
Melissa MacPherson 108
Chris Welton 162
Daniel Davies 52
Emily Matthews 110
Hope Whittington 164
Lauren Douglas 56
Liz McDade 112
Yuanpu Xia 166
Conor Dutson 58
Maria Eardley 60
Daniel McGee 114
Kitty McMurray 116
Georgia Young 168
Thomas Zielinski 170
Contents
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5

Artists Looking Forward
by Thomas Zielinski and Emma Cole
The constant question on everyone’s mind: what’s
next?
We asked a group of contemporary artists on their
thoughts about looking forward in the modern art
world. We got in contact with Rachel Maclean, Neil
Clements, Rupert Thomson, Gerard Byrne, and Maria
Fusco to see what they had to say about the future
of art.
Does art have the power to bring about
potential for change in our society?
R.M. ‘Yes, of course! Art, at its best, gives you an
alternative perspective on world, a new way to see
yourself and others. Art is exploratory; it breaks things
down, turns them over and subjects them to analysis,
without a definite end point or goal. In this sense, artists
uncover alternative or ways of seeing, hearing or doing
that are outside of convention. To be an artist is to
embrace the fact that societies are never static, but are
constantly open for reinterpretation and renewal’.
N.C. ‘The issue in my mind has to do with whether this
societal change could be expected to take place directly
or indirectly. I’m of the opinion that only the latter
would be possible, as for me an artwork needs to
operate successfully on its own terms before hoping to
exert any meaningful or long-standing effect on the
culture that surrounds it’.
If you could, what advice would you give
yourself now as an artist about to leave
education?
G.B. ‘Go to everything, and talk to everybody - seriously.
Recognise that your peers now will still be your peers in
ten / twenty / thirty years time. Work with them’.
If you could collaborate with any artist living
or dead, who would it be and why?
G.B. ‘I can’t imagine working with the figures I most
admire historically. Working with them would destroy
them for me. Although I would very much like to be able
to time travel; Spring in Dessau in the mid-1920’s,
Autumn in New York in 1968, then back to the Caberet
Voltaire in Zurich in 1916… proximity is everything
really’.
What is the first piece of art that really
mattered to you?
On what occasion do you lie?
R.M. ‘I lie quite a lot, usually to be polite. Being British I
think that we have a culture that requires a lot of casual
lying, mainly to make sure you don’t piss people off. We
are not very accustomed to dealing with frankness
either, so telling someone why you don’t like the meal
they’ve cooked for you, for example, would not be seen
as constructive criticism, rather the means by which to
cock up an otherwise pleasant evening’.
M.F. ‘Only when I have to’.
Which talent would you most like to have?
R.T. ‘I would like to be able to sing like Marvin Gaye’.
Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
N.C. ‘Earnest’.
What is your motto?
R.T. ‘In all sorts of ways, too many to list here. One thing
it can do is give people a sense of wonder at what they
do not know or fully understand - I know that is often
my reaction. That is a good starting point, in terms of
‘potential for change’.
Do you think art has a future?
R.T. ‘I do sometimes worry about this, but art is older
than most of the things that might destroy it so it will
probably stick around for longer too’.
M.F. ‘A parody of Henry Moore’s Oval with Points, which
featured in an episode of ‘Tales of the Unexpected’, Neck,
as a plot device’.
What do you consider your greatest
achievement?
G.B. ‘I think committing to work as an artist in my early
20’s was a wonderfully bold choice. I think anybody
who makes that sort of commitment can take pride
in it’.
M.F. ‘If it’s not out we don’t have it’.
R.M. ‘Of course! As long as there are people on earth
there will be art. I don’t think the desire to create and
express human experience through art is something
that could ever be killed off’.
Who are your favourite writers?
N.C. ‘J.G Ballard, Caroline A. Jones’
Artists Looking Forward
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Oliver Amphlett
ohamphlett@hotmail.co.uk | 07951 721233 | www.oliveramphlettphotography.co.uk
The documentary photographer attempts to produce truthful,
objective, and usually candid photography of a particular subject. Visual
storytelling exposes unseen or ignored realities and is used to chronicle
both significant and historical events, and everyday life. Documentary
photography is an effective tool for deepening understanding and
building emotional connections to stories, including those of injustice.
It can capture and sustain public attention, shed light on tough realities
– such as those of war and poverty stricken countries – and mobilise
people around pressing social and human rights issues.
I would suggest that documentary-style photography does not only
help represent a specific story, but is also effective in capturing an
essence of culture. It was the idea of studying and photographing
foreign cultures that lead to my fascination with Eastern culture,
specifically that of South Asia. After researching into the dense history
and politics surrounding the Gurkhas, I planned an expedition to Nepal.
Inspiring acts of bravery have earned the Gurkha soldiers an heroic
reputation and many have paid with their lives to secure the prosperity
and freedoms we enjoy today.
My aim has been to produce a series of powerful emotionally rich
images through photographic documentary, typically of the Gurkha
veterans and their communities living in the foothills of the Himalayas. I
aim to create dramatic photographs out of everyday scenes, capturing
entire stories in a single shot. What makes powerful photographic
documentary is the ‘story-telling’ that exists in a collection or series of
images. For my part, the most interesting component of this is its ability
to capture an essence of human struggle, spirit and joy.
‘Untitled’ (Gurkha Series), 2014
Oliver Amphlett
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9

Louise Angus
louiseangus1@hotmail.co.uk | 07423 296535
Please forward to address stated below;
5 Loner house,
Door Two, Squires Annexe
NE1 8ST
What is a house?
What is a studio?
How can one be combined with the other?
Or how can one space be separated from one
another?
With the mechanism of work and production in
the institution of hopeful succession, can a
space then be converted to a private
containment, to become a confinement where
art can progress into public exhibition?
Through this I collapse myself and submit to the
uniformity of the context of domesticity that
exists in the structure of the allocated space I
was provided by the university.
‘Conversation with myself’, 2015
Myself in conversation, before 2015
Production, before 2015
Louise Angus
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Sylwia Bak
sylwiabakart@gmail.com | 07951 539172
As a young artist, starting a professional practice, I am looking for
challenges. As a person coming from outside the UK I have slightly
different experiences related to art which have had a huge impact on
my current practice. And I have begun to work from imagination. In
approaching conditions of trauma the colour and brush marks have
become a major reflection of emotions. And something that once
seemed impossible, I am thinking of creating a slightly abstract world,
has become my greatest ally. In this I want the viewer to consciously
and unconsciously connect with the emotions that I look to express.
In the last few months I have developed practical skills as well as tried
to understand how other contemporary artists express their feelings
towards their personal experiences and the events from the world
around them. Emma Talbot, whose works are imbued with narrative
content have become a big inspiration for me. And in technical terms,
especially the composition and use of colour, Eleanor Moreton had a
huge impact on my practice.
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
Sylwia Bak
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Nadia Raphaella Baldini
nadia.r.baldini@gmail.com | http://nadiaraphaellabaldiniartist.portfolik.com
We are bombarded with images and signs every day of our lives. They confront us visually and invade our
space frequently. We may or may not remember them, recall their messages, or acknowledge their presence,
but we do briefly take them in. And for that moment they stimulate our imagination, senses and thoughts.
Through an exploration of material, colour and scale I wish to bring to the forefront of consciousness an
awareness of these ciphers and facsimiles, and the power they hold. And by inventing and adjusting the
space in which they are displayed, I wish to alter their meaning and function.
‘Assemblage’ (detail), 2015, (mixed media)
‘Assemblage’, 2015 (mixed media)
‘Untitled’, 2015 (mixed media)
Nadia Raphaella Baldini
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Hannah Baldwin
hannah@baldwin.eu.com | 077857 30577
We tend to think of certain objects through colour.
An apple, we might for example think of as green or
red, and as David Batchelor points out “it is by colour
alone that a certain stone tells us it is a sapphire or an
emerald” - Batchelor, D. Chromophobia. London:
Reaktion, 2000. [Pg. 25]
In truth an object’s appearance depends on how it
refracts and reflects the particular light around it.
This has always intrigued me and drawn me towards
investigating light and colour, and the conjunction
of the two. Through this the paintings I make have
merged into sculptural objects, as the intensive
colour on the reverse casts a colour trace onto the
wall. So where does this leave the image - in both
the painting’s edge and outside of this in its colour
shadow. For me this question intensifies the
relationship of image, object, surface and
environment.
‘Off White’, 2015 (spray and oil paint on aluminium)
‘Pot of Gold’, 2015 (spray paint on aluminium)
Hannah Baldwin
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Elizabeth Daisy Bedford
elizabeth.daisy@hotmail.co.uk | 07590 319079
The passing of time and the transient nature of life raises a number of questions about how we view
our existence.
A life can be lengthy or fleeting, but it is the transitory character of various living specimens such as flowers
that I draw inspiration from for my work. My practice explores the flower as a representation of passing
beauty. I have sought to explore a formal aesthetic of the flower and at the same time account for the change
and transformation it goes through within its life cycle.
I aim to expose the altered states of the flower once the vivaciousness of its life has started to diminish. This
fast paced change reflects a wider impermanence of life. I aim to capture the transformation but also to freeze
it through its various stages, and to fix it through X-ray so it can’t change any further.
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
Elizabeth Daisy Bedford
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Charlotte Belsten
chaf_92@hotmail.com | 07857 655450
1
Horror films have content that is made to frighten, yet, watching horror films can be a
calming positive experience through shared social situations. This contradiction I find
interesting. I am fascinated by fear and the turning point where the familiar and
comfortable turns into something uncomfortable. Although horror films are often filled
with horrific content, it is the imagination of the viewer that creates the biggest sense of
horror. The best horror lets you do the work.
2
I have made a series of small scale paintings using screen shots from horror films as a
starting point, in particular Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. By utilizing ideas of horror,
dreams and fantasy, contradictions occur. I aim to explore these contradictions. The horror
screen shots are picked apart and played around with creating new contexts. By
transforming the images into dreamy scenarios the uncanny is provoked. Working on
paper with watercolour and acrylic, allows me to respond to the changes that occur to the
paint. The process with inventing scenarios and then further exploring them through
responding intuitively, results in the images taking on new meanings where unplanned
things start to occur.
3
Dreams can be strange and mysterious in an unsettling way. Things are often strangely
familiar but never fully correct. When the boundary between reality and fantasy is blurred
an uncanny effect arises. In dreams sensations and images occur with no set beginning or
end. The mystified happenings can feel real but with shifting details and situations
transforming. Things are not what they seem and can change rapidly. A sense of comfort
and safety can be present but never relied upon. This shifting quality of dreams where the
familiar is present in an unfamiliar way creates a strangeness that can be present long after
waking up.
‘Untitled’, 2015 (acrylic on paper)
‘Untitled’, 2015 (acrylic on paper)
‘Untitled’, 2015 (acrylic on paper)
Charlotte Belsten
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At the Beginning
by Alicia Carroll
Northumbria University, BA (Hons) Fine Art, Induction Week, September 2012
Embarking on a three-year journey, over 70 aspiring artists gathered in the newly commissioned studios of
Baltic 39 for a week’s worth of collaborative study.
To begin we were asked to respond to the City of Newcastle, which for most of us was a new and unexplored
environment. Here commenced an intensive layering of ideas generation, testing, skills and techniques
gathering and self expression, and as a group we began to flex our creativity using Newcastle as a catalyst for
artistic production.
Culminating in our first group show, the week’s
experiments enabled us to create, investigate and
interact with each other. It was the first instance of
our community emerging within the structure of
the course.
Pictures by Chris Welton
At the Beginning
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Julie Louise Bemment
jbemment@hotmail.com | 07799 061884 | http://juliebemmentfineart.com
Phenomenology is the philosophical study of the
structures of human experience and consciousness.
Phenomena are experienced in our state of being
aware of our surroundings, through the senses
including seeing, touching, hearing and tasting. This
concludes by how our interpretation and thought
processes react to that which is experienced.
Driven by an interest in human perception, time, and
attitudes to physical and pictorial space, I am curious
in exploring our relationship with the world around
us. The work uses an expansive visual and material
vocabulary through painting and photography, and
in installations created from set-ups of found objects.
Considering architecture and structural influences I
investigate the way in which individuals engage with,
understand, and respond to their surroundings,
whilst taking into account how the brain
manipulates the information we receive.
Mixing abstracted motifs strongly connected to
architecture, yet influenced by Minimalism, the works
play on traditional technical conventions of pictorial
layering, illusion, and use of geometric form. Surfaces
and shadows create intersections of time and space,
intensify visual perception, and colour is used
intuitively to create unique visual illusions.
‘React’, 2015 (photograph)
I have also become interested in the stranger
qualities of our vision, such as the way in which upon
seeing an object we are able to either look over or
alternatively focus intensively on it as an isolated
detail. In the latter everything around what we are
looking at becoming a blur that allows us, like a
portal, to become drawn into and almost step inside
an object.
‘Temporal’, 2015 (photographed set up)
‘Provoke’, 2015 (acrylic on canvas)
Julie Louise Bemment
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25

Chloe Jane Bradley
clobradley93@gmail.com | 07889 565993
Captivity, fragility and ritual. These are key things that I am reflecting on at this current time through my work.
We overlook many aspects of day to day life, or merely have little awareness of activities occurring within it. If
it were possible to isolate these particular activities would we see them as completely unfamiliar, or would our
attention be captivated by them?
Working with lens based media and sound installation my practice investigates the unseen and yet intimate
bonds that exist between birds and their breeders. It serves as a topology of family, generation, breeders, birds
and the exhibiting of Australian Parakeets. I am interested in the decline of specialist bird breeding, in
negotiating it as an unnoticed pastime, and in unpicking the repetitive and ritualistic process of care it entails.
‘Flight’, 2015 (digital print)
‘B6923recipied25’, 2015 (digital print)
‘Cob/Splitdompied31’, 2015 (digital print)
Chloe Jane Bradley
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Hayley Emma Brookes
hayley.brookes1993@gmail.com | 07840 558856
We are consumed by hyper reality. We are engrossed by the over exaggerated lifestyles people claim.
“We watch, and we are watched”
Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the camera.
I use lens based media to negotiate reality TV. I look through its archives and rework its images. I isolate
individuals intensifying and displacing narratives from their original situations (shows) and environments.
Without their original context the emotional content of their expressions takes on new forms. I am interested
in voyeurism and in how this operates in relation to reality TV, and I’m interested in what exists between verbal
language and social behaviour.
‘Rah’ , 2015 (digital print)
‘Reem’, 2015 (digital print)
Hayley Emma Brookes
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Francesca Brown
f.l.brown@hotmail.co.uk or franbrown93@gmail.com | 07581 407935
The key interest within my practice is about expressing my identity in the form of a selfie. This means
exploring the idea of how you pose for an image shown to the world. A focus of the work is the idea that
individuals establish fake identities for use across social media.
I create the images using my mobile phone. Altering and increasing their scale distances the truth of it being
a selfie, and from being just another throwaway image. With the series I try to expose different sides of my
identity and character to give a sense of who I am in this context. Background objects within the images are
very much about where I am at the time the image is taken, allowing images to be individual as much as part
of a wider collective whole.
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
Francesca Brown
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Laura Brown
laurab1502@hotmail.co.uk | 07772 146074
‘Windermere Lake District’, 2015
‘Lanzarote Green Lagoon’, 2015
What we don’t see, may exist. We know more about our moon than we do about what lies beneath the
oceans. Hidden underwater worlds wait to be discovered, yet how can we come to witness them. Earth’s vast
oceans bear witness to some extreme phenomena, of natural beauty as well as constructed and accidental
additions to the ocean floor. A cenote in Mexico gives the illusion of a surreal underwater river, drawing in
even the most experienced divers to play in the hydrogen sulphate mist that flows between rainwater
and saltwater.
And for those who own fish, underwater worlds are created by the way the tank is decorated. The fish bring
these still seascapes to life. Using my own holiday photographs I attempt to capture through painted
landscapes a wider set of perspectives, changing how we view environments and the connections we make
between the land and the underwater.
When on a coastal summer holiday it is natural to visit the beach. Stepping into the ocean – a place I explore
– we often don’t take note of what lies beneath us. But for those who are equipped with a snorkel or diving
gear, exploration becomes possible. But what stays in our mind from what we see? Instinctively we create
memories (images) and draw comparisons to things we have seen before, perhaps a similar fish in
another place.
Laura Brown
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Jessica Carmichael
jess.092@hotmail.ac.uk
It is interesting how artists have
constructed and challenged
concepts of identity through the
human form. Through my own
interests my work has led me to
investigate and address the female
form through sculptural processes
whilst working through concepts of
gender inversion. In this I am
interested in exploring new
figurative forms through everyday
materials, creating subjective
comical exposures that open up
possibilities of new interpretation.
‘The Great Castration’, 2015
‘Tying the Knot’, 2015
‘Gender Switch’, 2015
Jessica Carmichael
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Alicia Carroll
alicia.carroll@ntlworld.com | 07772 532985 | www.alicia-carroll-art.weebly.com
Obelisk
Raw steel columns, which keeled on rain-softened soil,
now stand attentive on the gallery floor. Their faces,
stained by a fine film of rust, are carried by joints
succumbing to the contortions of their nature. Their
bodies, worn by their journey, reveal the marks of
fabrication.
Beginning in the workshop, hard steel is measured,
cut and welded into an assembly of familiar form.
These feckless structures, gathered in rooms
designed for production and making, are, in this
context, devoid of intention or purpose.
Transported into the pastoral environment of the
North East, these formal structures tether a rural
landscape into the frame of viewing. Through a
series of private events within various sites the
structures evolve from inanimate forms into tools.
Their occupation of these places results in an
accumulation of sediment and physical scarring on
their surfaces.
Reconstructed in a gallery environment a new
situation is created. Using both digital and analogue
projection the installations re-purpose accumulated
images of place, collaging them to create a layered,
technologically alert live event. As the projections
flick from one environment to the next narrative is
blurred. Time and place is folded through memory
and site and the images morph into a collective
non-site.
Within this the steel columns act as a
counterbalance to the transience of collaged light
and re-implement the figurative form. This
constructed environment is enhanced by the glitch
of digitally translated media and the whirr of the
projector fans, a mechanical mantra that fills the
silence between a reality and its reproduction.
‘Obelisk’, 2015 (projections on steel)
Alicia Carroll
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Continuous Creation
by Lucy Moss
There is a literary theory in which the reader writes
the text simply by interpreting it. Because every
reader will have a different interpretation, every time
the text is read it is changed, re-authored, if you like.
A chronologically backwards creation. Is this also
true of art, that to be a viewer is to co-create the
artwork? Perhaps an artwork is not a singular entity,
rather a rhizomatic relationship between its three
parts; the artist, the art-object (however it is
manifest) and the viewer.
It is easy to comprehend how the artist affects the
art-object, and by proxy the viewer. It is also not a
great leap to see how the art-object affects the
viewer, and can even influence the artist (think of a
painter responding to the canvas, or a happy
accident in which the artist chooses a ‘mistake’ to
become part of the work). But what of the viewer’s
influence on the art-object? The art-object acts as a
stimulus to the viewer, a catalyst that encourages a
response. This response can be termed
‘interpretation’. Each interpretation is unique, it has
never arisen before in precisely the same way. It is a
creation created from the artwork, but it is also a
creation created from the viewer. If the artwork,
instead of being a finite form, is in a constant state of
reinvention, an open work where the artwork is
changed every time it is viewed, then every
interpretation alters the artwork. But the artwork still
has a body, material form, a boundary. The object
itself never seems to change, how can an entity be
continually created anew if its manifestation never
alters?
The viewer’s interpretation can work backwards, it is
not only a response to the artwork, but it is part of
the artwork. This is because the conception of an
artwork, the idea or psychical manifestation of an
artwork, is part of that artwork. For example Francis
Bacon’s paintings are colour and paint and canvas,
they are also war and crucifixion, love and jealousy,
and a thousand other things. They are the emotions
they inspire and the resemblances of themselves
that people hold in their heads. Because these
things are part of the artwork, a viewer, simply by
interpreting the artwork shapes what that artwork is,
making it different whilst it physically remains the
same. The viewer, by interpreting the artwork,
becomes, in part, an author of that work. We return
to the three parts of the artwork, the artist, the
art-object, and the viewer. Each can change if the
others hold steady. The material the artwork is made
of can change, for example, yet if the idea of the
artwork remains intact, so does the artwork. These
‘mechanical’ rules seem to hold in other areas as
well. Think of an object, a tin-opener. A tin opener is
the metal that forms it. It is the shape, but it is also
the idea of the tin opener, and the uses it is put to. It
is its name and its name is a concept. The concept
originates from us, therefore we make the tin opener
what it is. What about other areas of art?
Mechanically, an artwork is akin to a song. A song is
finished once it is written, or perhaps it was sung
once. It is now complete, and doesn’t need to be
sung again to be finished. But, if it was sung again,
wouldn’t that second singing also be part of that
song? An artwork, when complete, is a finite form,
however it can be reinterpreted in infinite ways.
Each of these is part of the artwork, yet none have to
happen for the artwork to be complete.
So an artwork ceases to be an object, it becomes a
rhizomatic relationship of connections, momentary
couplings, and un-couplings. An art-machine. Its
cogs and gears, interpretations and influences. It is
the reviews that are written about it, the contexts
that surround it. While the artwork has a finite body
it contains infinite possibilities. It is paradoxically the
infinite contained within the finite; a multiplicity,
more than the sum of its parts, a product of
continuous creation.
Where does this leave us as artists, where does our
authorship stand? If we view this rhizomatic
relationship between artist, artwork and audience as
a dialogue, this becomes a question of who is
speaking, and who is speaking first? Just as it is
important that the viewer reacts to the artwork, it is
also important that they have something to react to.
As artists we are instigators of the conversation,
propagating a dialogue, giving it flesh, bones, a
heart, and a ribcage. We bring it into existence, an
active catalyst for the dialogue or ‘performance’ of
the work to come. An artwork is this movement
between entities, a dialogue. But it is also an object,
even if that object is an idea, made by the artist, and
it has many qualities other than communication.
Artists travel the borders between what a thing is
and what it is not. They are like a Shaman, a
channeller, bringing a multiplicity of ideas,
methodologies, theories and influences into the
single pinpoint that is the artwork.
Continuous Creation
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Francesca Casimir
frankiecasimir@hotmail.com | http://francescacasimir.weebly.com
CRAINT
Noun: craint, crainte; plural noun: craints
[French definition: to fear]
Verb: craint, craindre
1. Action, a form in which colour and paint exist as one:
They are attempting to craint today
Painting allows a familiarisation to colour. Placing material with colour there is an acknowledgment of existing
unity. Craint permits this unison, introducing colour and paint as equal forms. Colour is possessed by paint,
creating different sensations, which are spread over a surface and left to dry. Craint acts in various ways. A
drying time allows for the production of a thin protective coating, pushing and pulling the layers beneath the
wet paint. The boundary of craint becomes apparent, physical, acting almost like a shield, holding in the fluid,
and protecting the tension of the skin. The skin in turn creates multiple dissimilar areas of surface, all produced
with only one material, craint.
‘pull’, 2015 (detail)
‘peel’, 2015
‘peel’, 2015 (detail)
‘push’, 2015
Francesca Casimir
40
41

Hannah Charlton
hannah.charlton@yahoo.co.uk | 07971 813707
‘Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a
referential being or a substance. It is the
generation by models of a real without origin or
reality: a hyperreal.’
Jean Baudrillard
Informed by Jean Baudrillard’s writings on
simulation, the works intervene with the
spaces in which they are shown in a
disobedient manner exposing and
heightening notions of falseness. Through a
diverse media they assume a displaced
representation that imitates and re-presents in
order to confront conventions of authenticity.
The curious paradoxes evoked draw on the
viewer’s instinctive powers of association,
encouraging a questioning of the
relationships – existing and implied – in the
choreography of the multiple works
(fragments) across the space. In connecting
with ideas of the fake and the false, I am intent
on exposing the façade of the replica through
playful spatial constructions that operate
through actual and implied simulated realities.
‘Brick Wall’, 2015
‘Floored’, 2015
‘Studio’, 2015
Hannah Charlton
42
43

Emma Cole
emmacole@outlook.com
Branded Colour
Colour is consciously placed into people’s everyday lives, and is a key
visual attraction built into advertisements. Within the high street we
enter into a paradise of enticement through luminous commodities
and blocks of colour that direct and consume our gaze. The elusive and
compelling way in which colour absorbs an object, person, and place,
creates within us illusory satisfaction – a momentary feeling of
euphoria. “In one sense colour is here, now, around and in front of me, a
part of objects and atmospheres, as real and commonplace a presence as
anything.” – David Batchelor
Product consumption is commonplace within our contemporary
society, and as consumers we rely on intensive visual stimulation,
particularly through advertising. Visual pleasure generated through
images, aspirations, and products, is a desire we seek, not a necessity,
which rinses our wallets every month. I offer visual experiences of
colour that mimic and replicate the pleasures gained in these
commercial situations. In taking branded colour out of direct consumer
contexts I am isolating and reconfiguring its aesthetic function, as
visual stimulation, and repositioning it within formal contexts of
contemporary art practice.
‘Palette Panels’, 2015 (acetate on windows)
‘Starbucks, Primark, Coca Cola ii’, 2015
‘Starbucks, Primark, Coca Cola’, 2015
Emma Cole
44
45

Warren Connor
w.connor22@yahoo.co.uk | 07735 836683
My practice is a relentless enquiry exploring sound
and its proficiencies. Sound is a medium of vibration,
an energy force of its own. What captivated my
interest in the medium is its intangible qualities,
along with the immersive influence it can have on
space. Sound has few limitations, boundaries, and
ultimately through the mind is open to being
interpreted in various ways. What has drawn me to
sound is how it leaves behind possible limitations
that visual media have, in productive ways allowing
the mind to create images. The photographs I
produce hint at possible representations. When
creating sounds I like to think that one of their
potentials is to heal the mind, body and soul. I have
become increasingly inspired by Brian Eno and his
work, along with the idea that his music can be
activated as a method of healing. Connected to this I
like to think that my work can be used as a
therapeutic distraction of everyday stresses.
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Boundaries’, 2015
Warren Connor
46
47

Angharad Croft
annie_croft@hotmail.co.uk | 07557 766499 | angharad-croft.squarespace.com
The presence of absence.
I find it captivating how groups of people are so inherently different. I’m intrigued by diverse ethnic
subcultures within urban environments, and I’ve been documenting this through photography in Newcastle. I
often look for similarities between groups, but I’m constantly drawn in by their differences. Through this I’ve
found groups in different areas of the city expressing their cultural identities directly within the streets and its
buildings they occupy. I’ve started to revisit these locations as they are constantly changing. The more I’ve
returned the more I’ve found distinct markings and new forms of visual aesthetics. The photographs don’t
document the people and groups but instead have become focussed on the places, colours, patterns and
details of the streets where they live and work.
‘Buffet King’ , 2015 (digital image)
‘Chinatown’, 2015 (digital image)
‘Hot Pot’, 2015 (digital image)
Angharad Croft
48
49

Sharlie Cullen
sharlie_4@hotmail.co.uk | 07429 191126 | https://soundcloud.com/birkelandcurrent
My main concern is turning the studio into an
experimental, shifting, space where knowledge is
grown through the testing of various media and
materials. What I do is informed by science and the
approaches of the laboratory, I attempt to create
situations where ideas can be tried and tested. As a
starting point to this I often create sculptures
through found objects and find ways to
communicate these back through performance and
sound. I’m interested in working with sound and
electromagnetism as a way to create active tools for
thinking about the body in a physical space, of both
the artist and viewer, and the continued vanishing
line between the two.
‘DIY sequencer/electromagnetic’, 2015 (digital print)
‘Birkeland current’, 2015 (digital media)
‘What Is This Body?’, 2015 (video still/digital media)
Sharlie Cullen
50
51

Daniel Davies
danieldavies_@outlook.com | 07891 049826 | www.daniel-davies.com
Scroll down, double tap.
Scroll down, double tap.
Scroll down, double tap.
In the now not-so-new digital age we are
inundated with images, a stream of data
repeating and reproducing. We question
quality and ownership and continue to scroll
and spiral through what seems to be
something yet nothing, only to find
ourselves lost in cyberspace, or, back to
where we started. Searching.
Standing before a painting there is a sense
of how it has been made or what it is made
from. In front of a screen, viewing the same
work (as an image) it disappoints. The
characteristic of the hand-made that is
present in the painting is never fully tangible
in a digital image. So regardless of how
saturated we become with these images,
and how much the maker has been
removed, we are never satisfied with what
we find of these representations. It only
results in us searching for
‘Untitled’, 2015
something.
Nothing.
Scroll down, double tap.
Scroll down, double tap.
Scroll down, double tap.
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
Daniel Davies
52
53

Perpetual Year Planner
by Rachael Macarthur, Associate Fellow in the Colour Studio, Northumbria University
‘Fringe’, 2014 (acrylic on neon card)
A place for making art, for looking at and recording
the world, changes with each year passed. I equate
the time when I was marooned unwell in bed aged
5 years old, colouring drawings on paper = with a
routine of painting expediently onto paper on the
floor of the Colour Studio Northumbria. The
paintings I make change with each new place I live
in, with each new place I paint in, with each new
person I meet. I cannot forever count on what I call a
‘studio’ from one year to the next (home/ library/
alone at bedtime/ thoughts on the cusp of sleep)
but I can count on the forever-changing of myself,
and my place within these spaces.
Myself + paint + support + colour = I can transfer to
each new place I choose to call a ‘studio’, in the same
way I can count on the matrixial effects of reflecting
on a colour, which I carry as postcard reproductions
in my pocket.
‘Collared’, 2014 (acrylic and neon poster paint on navy
sandpaper, mint green polystyrene foam frame)
* Fehler blue: c. 2001, I am 20 and I am learning to
paint in oil. I trail a heavy sloe-black paint into my
parents’ house, home from the studio, stuck on my
shoe, caught there; I traipse it up the stairs, all over
the ivory cream carpet (brand new). Later, the blue
oil is stepped deep down into the warp-weft of the
carpet and, lying to my father that it is tarmacadam,
my mother and I scrub at the puddled marks in
angry silence (hers) while he watches telly behind
the living room door.
* Jubilee grey: c.2012, a friend has a baby and a 9-5
job. A time for making painting, now, is travelling to
and from work on the bus. Little paintings are made
with his trigger finger, over the bright white screen
of the iPad. The sun shines over the screen; the
white-on-white cancelled out to a dull transport-line
grey. There is his studio.
* Preferred red: c.2014, my thoughts of a red
reality are twisted by Matisse when I read that his
studio was not red at all. It was always grey.
Matisse turned it red for his painting “The Red
Studio” (1911) in a delicious choice of freedom, to
allow for harmony and for the buzz of the black
outlines to buzz blacker and harder. A funny
expectation (mine) now deadened.
* Manet’s black: c.1997 a stifling vermilion-hot
day in the art classroom at high school sends a
kaleidoscope of orange-red spectrum across my
retina. I am angry with the teacher who says we
are not allowed to use black in our paintings.
Why not? The answer does not suffice and years
ahead in future days, I think of Manet’s paintings
and the particularities of their black which seems
to be always truly his, like the black of Spanish
lace or the black of Japanese lacquer, and realise
he was correct in his singular, out-of-style usage.
* Helsinki white: c.2014, the Finnish crystal white
sun glows around me and you: in the cool of the
lake; in the garden; in our temporary bed; in the
forest; along the path with the tiniest frogs I have
ever seen. At the festival, the sun shines my eyes
to an all-white surround, and the sound makes
me remember and long for a place I do not think
I have ever known: longing reaches up from my
gut, into my heart, into my eyes, out into saltheavy
tears which must be the colour of
quarried chalk.
‘Untitled’, 2015
Perpetual Year Planner
54
55

Lauren Douglas
laurendouglas93@hotmail.co.uk | 0772 9434162
An anxiety around ‘ideals’ is heavily present within
our contemporary society. We are pulled in by
capitalist corporations through excessive spending,
warranted by a desire to feed personal aspirations
and define social positions. In approaching this
tension the work uses conventional motifs in
unconventional ways, positioning multiple and
opposing layers of appropriated and designed
wallpapers within a space. The wallpaper imagery is
consumer-orientated print matter. Interspersed with
this are printed receipts, bringing visual languages of
consumption and spending into direct contact and
question. Repeating imagery to make patterns
reflects the way in which consumer attitudes
become ingrained over time through a process of
repetition and reiteration. This becomes so
compelling and familiar that we neither notice nor
question it. My work positions this homogeneity and
conformity within its capitalist opposite, spending.
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Flux’, 2015
Lauren Douglas
56
57

Conor Dutson
conordutson@hotmail.co.uk | 07926 486444
Investigating the connection between
music and language is an area that I am
particularly interested in, and is the main
direction of my practice. Works have been
produced through a combination of spoken
word recording (taken from both found and
self recorded audio) and a guitar played to
mimic the sound of the voice.
Despite not being traditionally considered
as such, the spoken voice has musical
properties. This becomes evident in the way
we control the way we speak, changing the
pitch and rhythms of our voices to express
different emotions. This becomes clearer
when heard alongside a musical instrument
replicating the notes of the voice, allowing
the speech to be located in a musical
context. I am interested in the way that this
strips language from meaning, and pitches
sound with sound.
Inspired by artists and musicians such as
Janet Cardiff, John Cage, and Frank Zappa,
my attempt is to create an atmosphere in
which the two elements of the piece can be
heard both separately and together, blurring
the line between music and speech.
‘This is how I think. Every. Single. Day’, 2015
Conor Dutson
58
59

Maria Eardley
mariaeardley1994@gmail.co.uk
We all live our lives and walk the streets and so we all
experience it. Its temporary existence leaves it
vulnerable. Its anonymity and unknown reasoning
causes curiosity but allows it to speak for itself. In
truth we all leave marks. Some add to them, some
ignore them. Take from it what you wish. I create
environments as positive micro-topias, points of
interaction and exchange. Enjoy the moment.
Pass it on.
‘Keep Standing Together’, 2015
‘How Do You Feel?’, 2015
‘If You Respect Me I’ll Respect You’, 2015
Maria Eardley
60
61

Kate Errington
kate.errington@hotmail.com | 07753 115819
I am interested in the contrasting structures of rigid
pieces of furniture and pliable bedding, and in
manipulating these through physical reforming and
other materials such as plaster to create an alien like
flesh and bodily quality to the sculptures.
The materials I work with allow me to explore
possibilities of form and experiment with different
and new ways of making. This is important as it is
process and materials that lead the work. In many
ways the process is more important than the
finished work, making the work interests me more
than having the object or sculpture left at the end.
Because of this I often choose to revisit old works
and rework them, to play around more with them
and expand what I can do with them as materials
alongside the furniture and objects that I have to
hand.
‘Flesh’, 2015
‘Guts’, 2015
Kate Errington
62
63

Samantha Furze
samfurze@hotmail.co.uk | 07875 245040
Forward,
Two steps back,
Left,
‘Circulation in series, Test 1: Compound 3’, 2015
Movement is more than a mere action of one foot in front of another, it
speaks of the physical language inherent in architecture. Light, colour,
and shape are primary architectural agents, while space, time, and
moving form introduce actual relations between objects and people.
Back,
Circle,
Look,
Down,
Within the work the room becomes a template that defines the
installation of objects, and in so doing becomes a new physical
(architectural) frame. I choreograph materials and mechanics to set a
dialogue of movement, individual and particular to the environment.
Through the casual basis in which objects are staged the equipment
becomes a productive obstacle. Interruptions occur as the objects that
make the work are negotiated and navigated, altering and disrupting
the illusionary effects seen by the eye. The aim is not to trick but instead
to make visible.
Keep moving.
‘Test 1, Compound 39’, 2015
‘Movement 67’, 2015 (projection on perspex)
Samantha Furze
64
65

Kimberley Gallon
kimberley.gallon@northumbria.ac.uk | 07756 519499
My work features my grandparents, both on my mother’s and father’s side, documenting their lives and their
interactions with the world around them. I didn’t intentionally seek to show the differences between them
but in the end this is what developed. In terms of age there isn’t much of a difference, however through
circumstances their lives have become very different.
In this series I have used analogue film photography to document and record their lives. There is an aesthetic
with film that draws me to it, and I like that the images are unseen until processed in the darkroom. This is a
clear distinction from the dominant digital age where images are immediately visible and discarded at the
point of photographing. 35mm is the format associated with historic family photographs, so the medium
supports my own reflection of photographing my older relatives.
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
Kimberley Gallon
66
67

Emily Gordon
emily.gordon24@gmail.com
Through the paintings I experiment with
mark-making, colour, shape and form. My
practice explores ideas of transformation,
through destruction and reconstruction. I
cut and rip my paintings apart to rebuild
them into new works. This approach has
become crucial as I don’t see works as
finished until I have destroyed them to some
extent. My current works have pushed this
to a new extreme, where I am cutting and
ripping paintings apart until only piles of
canvas are left on the floor. I see this as the
starting point of the paintings, with the piles
of cut and ripped canvas the building
blocks. As I rebuild the paintings fragments
and parts come together in fresh ways with
one another. Reconstructing the pieces
creates entirely new paintings and with it
new meanings. Dynamic new forms are
created and these enable me to display the
paintings in less formal and unconventional
ways, allowing them to become a part
greater of the space.
‘Untitled’, 2015 (acrylic on MDF,
H73cm x W116cm)
‘Untitled’, 2015 (acrylic on canvas, H114cm x W71cm)
‘Untitled’, 2015 (acrylic on canvas, H100cm x W79cm)
Emily Gordon
68
69

Yellow Exhibition
by Frankie Casimir
Yellow was a pop-up exhibition
initiated in response to the
Colour Studio Northumbria
(CSN) Conversation series held
during the autumn of 2014.
CSN is a research and practice
resource within Northumbria’s
Department of Arts, operating
within and outside of the
academic curriculum.
Yellow, led by Sue Spark,
extended the dialogue of the
CSN Conversation, allowing
artists to explore yellow as form,
material, object, phenomena
and proposal within the
expanded field of painting.
Participants initiated discussion
and practical making
negotiating yellow as colour,
content and function within
painting.
The range of works created
allowed yellow to be pushed
outside the distinct definition
of the colour.
Yellow featured work from:
Nikki Lawson, Victoria
McDermot, Sophie Byron-
Forster, Emma Goodson, Kitty
McMurray Matthew Simcox,
Matthew Young, Lucy Moss,
Rachael Macarthur, Charles
Danby, Daniel Davies, Nadia
Baldini, Frankie Long, George
Unthank, Frankie Casimir, Sue
Spark, Rebecca Gavigan,
Hannah Charlton, Julie
Bemment
Rachael Macarthur ‘Puzzle’, 2014
Nadia Baldini ‘Untitled’, 2014
Frankie Long ‘Untitled’, 2014
Charles Danby ‘Untitled’, 2014
George Unthank, ‘Raw Ochre’, 2014 Daniel Davies ‘IM9-78717’, 2014
Frankie Casimir, ‘Gloss Drop’, 2014
Sue Spark ‘Untitled’, 2014
Rebecca Gavigan ‘Untitled’, 2014
Hannah Charlton ‘Untitled’, 2014
Julie Bemment ‘Untitled’, 2014
Yellow Exhibition
70
71

Dean Hall
dean09o90@gmail.com | 07446 178078
Mark – noun – a line, figure, or symbol made as an
indication or record of something.
This is one definition of what a mark is, there are
many more, however it is an important one for
me. A mark needs context. I use marks, be it one
or many, in my paintings to represent and
respond to what I see and experience on a
day-to-day basis in and around the city area I live
in. I draw inspiration from the smallest of things,
from a colour on the wall to an event I see while
passing in the street. Either or both can have a
great deal of meaning to me and my work. A
crucial factor within my work is speed, be it how
quickly the piece is created, or the perception of
the speed of the marks made. This sense of speed
and fluidity in my work I believe stems from my
connection to graffiti, which as part of the urban
environment I’ve grown up in and has always
been part of what I’ve responded to. The shapes,
marks and colours used in this style of
production have always fascinated me, and I try
to take elements of this into my own work.
Through the way the sprays are used and
manipulated, the techniques, and through how
quickly these pieces are created.
‘Untitled’, 2015 ‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
Dean Hall
72
73

Sarah Horsman
angel_photography@msn.com | 07868 385143
In my work I am attempting to explore the
relationship between natural and man-made
environments through moving image. I am looking
at what it is that connects these seemingly opposite
places, and what happens when we bring them
together in the same space. Through the process of
making this work I began to question what it really
means to have a natural landscape. Can an
environment really be called natural when it is being
constantly altered by human interference? And
when a contemporary man-made object is placed
into such an environment, does it become
sculptural? My decision to work with moving image
came from my growing interest in film, and the
realisation that the environments I was interested in
are time-based, constantly changing through both
human and natural intervention.
‘Untitled’, 2015 (film still)
Sarah Horsman
74
75

Samuel Hurt
samhurt@live.com | www.basecampuk.com
With plausibility and the ‘truth’ of the
photograph in mind, my work explores the
trajectory of current digital images and relations
to past photographic technologies. I investigate
how the wide accessibility to digital
photographic formats and post processing
techniques may be shifting the relationship that
the contemporary photography image has to its
historic past.
In an attempt to engage the viewer in deeper
sensory clarity I am working with optical
techniques such as stereopsis and threedimensional
image generation. This not only
provides the illusion of an image literally
growing beyond its two-dimensional plane, but
also creates a single amalgamated image from
two mutually exclusive parts put together within
the eye of the viewer. Through this I aim to lend
a unique and temporal nature to the image.
Furthermore, I am investigating the use of
moving imagery in place of standard still images
found in such stereographic displays - forcing an
older medium to produce new creative
pathways. The bringing together of a 19th
century viewing apparatus with a contemporary
digital viewing platform establishes
contradiction and facilitates constructive
dialogue of image making, media and
technology.
‘Unitled’, 2015 (still from stereoscopic video pieces).
‘Boy by the Valley’, 2015 (digital image)
‘Lounge Entertainment’, 2015 (digital image)
Samuel Hurt
76
77

Jenny Irvine
jrzirvine@gmail.com | 07801 478905
I am primarily concerned with colour, tone and gesture within the oil paintings I produce and what these
pictorially imply when set next to a title. In my works there is always a direct connection between a painting
and its title – with any narrative association being generated through the sound of the word. The titles are
chosen through personal preferences for the sound of individual words, often with an interest in the
semantics of the word in mind.
I have been exploring ways of applying and handling oil paint to create different surfaces and textures, finding
that some approaches create surfaces that do not look or even feel like oil paint. The words I am drawn to, and
how I think to interpret them, has influenced the range and variation of painting techniques I have generated.
To me ‘sigh’ is a soft word, like an exhaled puff of air in the cold. This was thought about as a number of thin
layers of pale grey and white paint.
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Sillage’ , 2015 (oil on paper 27x24cm)
‘Sigh’ , 2015 (oil on paper 35x22cm)
Jenny Irvine
78
79

Sophie Jarvis
sophie_0501@outlook.com | 07580 057479
My motivation comes from my childhood and the activity of tracing
everyday objects. By taking conventional objects and tracing them
several times over until they just become a shape, and are no longer
recognisable as the object they once were, I am able to generate
detached mobile forms. The works play with cut-outs, colour reflection,
and surfaces, and up close their collaged messiness is evident. There are
scratches and pencil marks across paper surfaces, roughly cut shapes,
and other traces that evidence their making. Through vibrant colours
and large primary scale shapes the works explore childhood making
and more knowing formal conventions of art making. My attempt is to
create playful and stimulating environments, by displaying objects on
the walls and floor, that can be walked around and encountered by
viewers.
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
Sophie Jarvis
80
81

Samuel Curtis Johnson
scjohnson3@hotmail.co.uk | 07795 563787
The installations and paintings I produce connect to research and ideas
of mapping positioned within the fields of archaeology and geology.
Mapping through deep earth excavation, the structuring – stratification
– of rock layers, and the time-based layering of sedimentation –
superposition. I am interested in ‘phasing’, the concentrated
accumulation of earth materials connected with land use, and in the
anomalies it produces within the earth’s strata. Interruptions and
disruptions produced by agriculture, industry, excavation and building.
Using these ideas I attempt to physically construct and layer spaces
through installation and paintings, deploying spatial contaminations /
anomalies that interfere with the architectural orthodoxy of the spaces.
This allows me to alter the perceptual experience of the viewer and
their interaction with the work. Through this I have become interested
in awkward navigation that plays on ‘barriers’, permeable borders, and
that activates thinking and orientation around the ‘front and back’ of
the work.
The installations provide a physical platform for these ideas, placing the
viewer in immersed navigational and spatial relationships with the
space. Lights respond to the movement of the viewer, flickering,
creating sensory experiences that further disorientate and disrupt a
navigation of the space. The paintings provide an alternate
representation of phased layers, formed with marks and bands of colour
that cross and contaminate from one to another. The paintings optically
shift depending on how the viewer encounters them, as iridescent
pigments alter and interfere with underlying colours.
‘Navigational’, 2015
‘Navigational’, 2015
‘Unititled’, 2015 (gloss, oil, pearlescent, iridescent on
reverse side of canvas)
Samuel Curtis Johnson
82
83

Laura Joyce
ljoyce94@hotmail.co.uk | 07514 518143
Every day we carry out many mundane activities and interact with the same or similar objects, not giving
these a second glance or much thought. My work is an attempt to disrupt this normality and bring humour
into the mundane through the use of large scale sculptures. In my work I increase the scale of familiar
everyday objects and expose boundaries between the real and the manipulated. I create these larger than life
sculptural replicas using unusual industrial materials such as compressed polystyrene. I then incorporate these
sculptures into performed activities, activating them in real-world contexts, and using video to record these
encounters. These pieces are intended to provoke curiosity and allow people to witness the unexpected.
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
Laura Joyce
84
85

The Death of Traditional
Art Galleries and
Museums
by Emily Matthews
Digital technology is having a significant impact on
the artworld, whether welcomed or not. Its
expansive forms, through painting, sculpture,
moving image, photography, print, installation,
sound, have all been transformed by new digital
methods and technologies, while new forms have
emerged through virtual reality, digital installation
and net art. These new forms in the main sidestep
the museum and gallery, and its supremacy,
distributing visual practices through the Internet.
The changes in the music and publishing worlds
through the Internet seem to show what is faced
and probable on the commercial side of the
artworld. The selling of artwork would be more
efficient and more cost effective if it was to be done
through the internet. Many people in the art world,
galleries, curators and artists, would find this
problematic, arguing that art has to be seen or
experienced. However, this is already not always the
case, many collectors purchase works without
seeing them in person as they trust the galleries and
advisors they are buying from.
Does this mean within the commercial frame that
galleries are the thing of the past? And how do we
unpick this from other influences, such as recessions
and weak economies that have hit more broadly
across the commercial sector. And what of artists,
how do they position themselves within this altered
landscape. Galleries may for the time remain the
best places for works to be shown, but digital
technologies are leaning to other contexts and
platforms. And what from the gallery and Museum
side. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MOMA), New
York, has embraced the digital change into their
galleries, making the experience smartphone
friendly. Visitors are able to interact with the
environment through the use of the smart phone,
giving them another perspective to the artworks.
They want people to embrace the digital change
and learn more through it. They need to appeal to
modern audiences, who want to be surrounded by
technology and be able to use their phones
whenever they please. Many museum officials insist
that there is an influential aesthetic and cultural
foundation to this as well. As Paola Antonelli (senior
curator of architecture and design at the MOMA)
states ‘We live not in the digital, not in the physical,
but in the kind of minestrone that our mind makes
of the two.’ [2] Saying that the two differences have
an important role in helping people understand and
explore this ‘new’ culture.
Cooper Hewitt from the Smithsonian Design
Museum has embraced the new culture in which we
live in and has created a 21st century design
museum. ‘’Cooper Hewitt’s renovation provides the
opportunity to redefine today’s museum experience
and inspire each visitor to play designer before,
during and after their visit.’[3] It has taken three years
and ninety-one million dollars to renovate, giving
the institution 60 percent more gallery space to
enable a new visitor experience that should fit in
with the new digital age. When entering the
museum each visitor is given a digital pen (with
computer memory, a radio for communication, and
a touch sensitive stylus) intended to let visitors play
and explore using tablets. And they have rooms that
project images onto the walls from the tablets
allowing the visitors to be immersed in a totally new
experience.
The issue of sharing collections online came around
when Google began a project called Art Project. This
was to provide virtual tours and have images of the
artworks, using high definition cameras. There were
matters of copyright, commercialisation and Google
making a profit from what the museums owned. In
2010 the Art Project kicked off with 17 museums;
today it has 500 institutions in 60 countries with 7.2
million artworks. The high definition images that are
captured are about 10 billion pixels, more than the
eye can detect. This allows the public viewing the
work online to see details, scratches and brush
strokes, that when viewing in real life cannot be
detected from where it can be viewed.
These experiences won’t necessarily replace gallery
and museum facilities, where direct contact and the
first-hand experience of the artwork will always offer
something outside of and beyond the computer or
smartphone screen, as Ms. Merritt, from the Centre
for the Future of Museums states ‘Virtual art will
never psychologically replace the real, because a
piece of the creator is attached to the object itself.’
[4] But they can and perhaps are informing and
deepening our relations to artworks and the
possibilities of how and where and on what terms
we encounter them.
[1] unknown. (2005). How has art changed? Available:
http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/how_has_art_
changed/ . Last accessed 28th Jan 2015.
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/arts/artsspecial/
the-met-and-other-museums-adapt-to-the-digital-age.
html
[3] unknown. (2015). The new Cooper Hewitt experience.
Available: http://www.cooperhewitt.org/newexperience/.
Last accessed 29th Jan 2015.
[4] Lohr, S. (2014). Museums Morph Digitally. Available:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/arts/artsspecial/
the-met-and-other-museums-adapt-to-the-digital-age.
html . Last accessed 19th Jan 2015.
The Death of Traditional Art Galleries and Museums
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87

Tommy Keenan
thomas.keenan1991@gmail.com
Intrigued by the vast spectrum of gender
stereotypes evident in our culture, I
investigate these often deemed ‘awkward’
subjects. My interest is particularly focused
within the ultra-masculine culture of today
and explores how this negotiation of the
male is often in reactionary denial of the
feminine.
My social life exposes me to this behaviour
and I am by no means exempt from its
influence. In a society that is so image
orientated, both male and female, there are
conformities of maleness that are hard to
ignore. The body itself has become an
image to be consumed in contradiction to
the physical masculinity it so desperately
wishes to attain.
From my experience, I feel there is a
confused ideal as to what is generally
considered to be masculine or maleness.
What ideal should I fit into? My work is an
ongoing investigation into how repressed
inner desires might instruct individual
identities, and the works themselves are for
now personal fictions of a hyper-masculinity
I have experienced.
‘The Family’ (left to right - Oliver the Orifice, DENNIS, Rodger the Cabin Boy and Eric), 2014-15
Tommy Keenan
88
89

Sophie Keith
sophiekeith@hotmail.co.uk | 07786 852481 | www.sophiekeith.co.uk
Uncertainty, interruption, and disturbance are things that drive my artwork. I produce
crocheted blankets ‘comfort blankets’, and these are extended into sculptural objects. In
making these I use personal photographs to convey narrative and paint to disturb and
disrupt them. The blankets are created to become transitional objects. Which as Mike Kelly
writes, ‘is primarily a tactile object associated with great physical pleasure. It is very present. This
is even more the case with the infant’s transitional object, which has been called the child’s first
‘Not-Me-Possession.’ This object represents the mother in her totality… As figurative sculpture,
transitional objects are especially interesting in that they do not picture the mother.’
‘Untitled’, 2015
The blankets, as transitional objects, represent a replacement for the mother figure, a sense
of security which becomes upturned with the presence of unwelcomed all-seeing-eyes
and oozing paint. I use collage to create an enclosed world in which the characters I
produce are enveloped in the comfort of the omnipresent blankets. However a sense of
unease disrupts this safe domain, I use the paint to convey a higher force, encroaching and
enclosing in on the characters. These realms are created to signify the fear that sits in our
unconscious minds, the aesthetic being the uncanny. The uncanny is represented in its
own trope of repeated imagery - the double, and through the inclusion of an another eerie
inexplicable presence, which we place to the back of our minds, for fear of doubting our
own intelligence.
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Locus Suspectus’, 2015
Sophie Keith
90
91

Kinnetico
jjasperart@gmail.com
The practice brings escapism and the world of artificially beautiful
aesthetics within games, books, and science fiction into new forms of
reality. Constructed as an environment through sculptural objects and
immersive installation the work creates a world similar to our own,
enveloping the senses, engaging the mind, and allowing an escape
into a more peaceful parallel space. Influenced by artists such as Jeff
Koons and Dan Flavin, and authors Terry Pratchett and Kate Mossè, my
work encompasses a mix of elements that brings my own unique
interactions of escapism into a creative form.
‘Untitled’, 2015
Kinnetico
92
93

Michiyo Kurosawa
contact@michiyo-kurosawa.com | +44(0)7478 753848 | www.michiyo-kurosawa.com
Miles In The Globe
The philosopher Immanuel Kant suggested that we
are limited in our ability to understand the world we
live in. This has led me to examine alternative
aesthetics within the landscape, and to create
images outside of our conventional viewing. My
work is inspired by the idea of map that allows the
explorer to travel the world beyond the visual
horizon. In the work 24,901.55 Miles in the Globe I
photograph remote natural scenery as a way to
study geographic and geologic phenomena and
structures. From these landscape photographs I
work with similarities and manipulate the digital
images to create new semi-fictional works. These
new images exaggerate the beauty and terror of the
landscape and offer a new image aesthetic. They
extend the horizon beyond what is known and
reflect a truth of non-human life, which nature
operates beyond political notions and outside the
boundaries of nations.
‘The Globe, Norway and Japan’, 2015 (200 x 300cm)
‘The Globe, America and United Kingdom’, 2014 (60 x 90cm)
‘The Globe, America and Egypt’, 2015, (200 x 300cm)
Michiyo Kurosawa
94
95

Rosa Langran
rosa.langran@hotmail.co.uk | 07887 369517
I have produced a collection of short stories based
on personal sexual experiences with a combination
of real life events and exaggerated fantasies. These
texts were read and performed by an actor and
recorded. The recordings are played through
headphones offering the listener an individual and
private encounter with my fictionalised experiences.
In my photographs I am the subject. These works
include pieces of text that come directly from my
writing. The text statements are often explicit and
they may and appear like instructions or as
provocations towards the viewer.
‘Untitled’, 2015
Rosa Langran
96
97

Resurrecting Spectres
from World War II in an
Intensely Private Drama
by Chris Welton
Reality flickered strangely as the scruffy rag tag
assortment of naval ratings disembarked from the
World War II military truck and trudged through the
cold February drizzle up the muddy track. Watching
them stand to attention, shivering in their period
uniforms and duffle coats, mumbling complaints
whilst the flag was raised at HMS Standard, a
recreated 1942 British naval camp, it all felt uncannily
real. And over the next 24 hours this strange sense
of time-shift became increasingly acute for me.
I don’t know whether it was the remoteness of the
location (mobile phones stop working long before
you set off on the half hour, five mile, drive along
unpaved tracks into the heart of Kielder, Europe’s
largest man-made forest), or artist Matt Stokes’
attention to detail, but I’ve participated in reenactments
before and nothing has ever come even
close to the displacement felt of my sense of
personal identity.
Matt Stokes’ interests revolve around history,
subcultures and their connected socio-political
effects. A focus of his research lies in challenging
stereotypes, often via large-scale collaborations with
people, groups or communities to stage closed
performances or fluid events, that result in films,
archives or actual visceral moments. He recently
produced In Absence of the Smoky God (2014), a
collaborative vocal composition inspired by Barry
Hines’ 1984 BBC apocalyptic docu-drama Threads.
The composition and connected video, based on
dystopian worlds and ideas of the revision of
language, evolved through workshops that
incorporated the LARP (live action role play)
ensemble techniques that the Stone Frigate project
was exploring.
Recalling the Stone Frigate experience I still feel
strange emotions rising up inside me. The whole
concept of a remote military psychiatric
Could more than memories have been resurrected in Matt Stokes’
reenactment?
rehabilitation camp, established as the Royal Navy’s
answer to mental illness and insubordination in its
ranks during World War II, felt uncomfortable even
before we arrived at the event. To participate in the
role of the Commanding Officer of the base,
charged with the responsibility of identifying the
genuinely sick and weeding out the duplicitous, put
me at the heart of an institution that in today’s terms
felt akin to the electro convulsive therapy and
lobotomies of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over a
Cuckoos Nest.
Matt had positioned Stone Frigate as a realistic
psychological live action role play, recalling an
almost forgotten detail of war history, drawing on
historical records and evidence from relatives of
those who were there to make it as realistic as
possible. The LARP was designed for 30-40 players,
focusing on themes of social stigma, control and fear
in the relationships between inmates and camp
staff, who ultimately held the inmates’ future in their
hands. LARP events use a well-established range of
specially developed interaction techniques and the
participants for this event were drawn from far and
[picture by Sally Atkinson Lockey]
wide, both experienced ‘larpers’ from Scandinavia
and the UK, and LARP first-timers like myself as
Camp Commander, together with fellow
Northumbria fine art student George Unthank, who
took on the role of the camp’s Chaplain.
If reality had blurred at the inmates’ arrival at the
camp it was lost on many occasions for me after –
whether it was when discussing inmate case notes
with the camp’s medical officer; giving instructions
for dealing with insubordination to my junior
officers; eating the period mess food; or lying in my
crude steel frame wartime bed in a chilly communal
dormitory in Kielder Castle, genuinely wanting an
uncomfortable experience to end.
As a real-time performance, where you only ever
witness your personal ‘scenes’, you can’t help
wondering what the other participants were
experiencing at the same time. But, like life itself, the
LARP format is in essence a deeply private drama in
which you play one of the lead roles in your creation
of the event.
I had wondered at the inclusion of a lengthy debrief
session, designed by Kevin Burns, a counsellor
trained in Integrative Psychosynthesis, scheduled on
the Sunday afternoon, to ‘bring players’ out of their
playing characters and back to present day reality.
But, recalling the complete mental meltdown of a
young Irish sailor called Peter O’Connel, tormented
by his own identity crisis late on the Saturday
evening, which months later still feels like a
disturbingly authentic memory, has allowed me to
understand the real potential for the players to
begin to lose their own sense of identity over such a
prolonged role-play. At points the experience
definitely crossed some invisible mental boundary,
to take the players into a new and compulsive
phantom reality that it felt difficult to break free
from.
As the event closed, with the whole company
standing in the barrack hut with snow beginning to
fall outside and the Chaplain singing a plaintiff
unaccompanied rendition of Matt McGinn’s Depth
of my Ego, it felt like in that wild forgotten place we
had managed to conjure up spectres of something
very sad that had taken place there over 60 years
before; and the only word that could adequately
describe the emotion that I felt was ‘haunted’.
The Stone Frigate LARP took place 27th February – 1st
March 2015
It was created by North East-based artist Matt Stokes
supported by Calvert Trust, Kielder; The Forestry
Commission; Kielder Water & Forest Park Development
Trust; with financial support from Arts Council England.
For further details go to:
www.stonefrigate.wix.com/1942
Resurrecting Spectres from World War II in an Intensely Private Drama
98
99

Dominic Lockyer
lockyerdom@yahoo.co.uk | domonline.tumblr.com
Remote Viewing
In the age of information technology, images have
become a disposable folly. These fragments of history
and memories are easily lost. Our world is a world of
remote viewing. We should question the
representation of this image (outcome), and our own
existence. I present a response to a world behind a
screen, in contrast with the world I experience. I do
this through the translation of images, memories,
and stories, into physical artworks through time and
thought in drawing and painting.
‘Remote Viewing #1’, 2015 ( pencil and ink on paper)
‘Observation’, 2015 (ink on paper 15cm x 4cm)
‘Perspective’, 2015 ( ink and watercolour on brown Amazon.com
packing paper 38cm x 19cm)
Dominic Lockyer
100
101

Frankie Long
chessie.long@ntlworld.com | 07912 852566 | instagram: frankielouiselong
#subversion #appropriation #transformation
#pattern #design #print #interior #traditional
#artstudent #endtampontax
I am beginning to realise the significance of the role
social media is playing within my art practice. It’s the
most accessible source of social commentary and
it’s also the main way I present my artwork to the
world. My practice looks into the way women are
currently viewed in society. I’m angry about
inequality towards women. Many people try to
trivialise sexism or present counter-arguments that
women are over-reacting when an issue around
inequality is raised. I therefore want to bring to
attention through the works I produce the issues I
see women facing. My approach is through the
media, materials and processes I use. The lino
printing reflects a relentlessness of activity, through
the labour of cutting and the repetition of the
printing, and the paper I have handmade represents
the domestic roles of women. Flowers are important
images within my work and I subvert their female
associations by rendering vaginas in their petals. I
do not want to confine myself to a singular stance
concerning women’s gender inequality, as even
when exposed these issues transcend geographical
and political borders and continue to need to be
voiced.
‘Untitled’, 2015 (lino print on handmade paper and carved plaster)
‘Untitled’ , 2015 (lino print on handmade paper /carved plaster)
‘Untitled’, 2015 (lino print on handmade paper and carved plaster)
Frankie L:ong
102
103

An Introduction to
Feminism
by Melissa MacPherson
It would not be an overstatement to say that the feminist
movement has been and continues to be relevant and
highly necessary for female artists positioning themselves
within the contemporary artworld. Vigorous in its mission
and multifaceted, arguably the most essential
characteristic of the feminist movement is its extreme
diversity with regards to ideology, and the waves and
disputes over what it actually means to be feminist. The
bringing together of women to evoke change is crucial
for the female artist working in a society teeming with
patriarchy and gender inequality. In her writings of
contemporary women and issues around gender, editor
and author Sarah Gamble explains that feminism needs to
‘retain a commitment to change the real world.’[1] It is still
commonly believed that women are beneath or unequal
to men, amongst other things resulting in women being
denied equal opportunities. Feminism strives and needs
to continue to strive to abandon this situation and bring
about parity.
The movement itself has however been highly criticized
in its intention, as well as being misinterpreted by people
who do not wish to align themselves to it. Gamble in The
Routledge Companion to Feminism and Post Feminism
(2001) recognises the differences across the waves of
feminism – particularly those between the feminist and
the postfeminist – however she argues that the
divergences are over exaggerated undoubtedly by the
mass media who are ‘too willing to capitalize on the
opportunity to portray it as a break in the massed ranks of
the ‘sisterhood’[2]. Oppositions between the waves
include what equality actually demands, how to achieve
it, and the obstacles that women face to attain it. The
continual changing parameters of thought around these
make it virtually impossible to determine where one wave
begins and where another one ends.
Writings by women taken from the sixteenth and
seventeenth century attempted to define feminine
identity, and have since been described as early or first
wave feminism. One of the first accounts of the counter
attack on male misogynistic writings can be found in the
pamphlet Her Protection for Women (1589). Written
under the argued pseudonym Jane Anger and defined as
‘the first piece of feminist polemic’[3], Anger describes the
purity of women and explains that evidence of this can
be found in the teachings of Genesis. It is believed that
God first created man from dust and dirt before he
created woman, Anger describes how God was pleased
with his creation and consequently fashioned woman
from the flesh of the man to generate something more
pure. Throughout the following century, a number of
women united to write about their dissatisfaction – what
would now be described in the twenty-first century as
direct-action feminism. These women were overtly acting
against what religion and society was telling them to do.
The mid to late 1800s saw a rise in female dissatisfaction
with regards to the right to vote, and it wasn’t until 1928
that women were able to vote as equals in the United
Kingdom.
Fast forward to 1965, where Betty Friedan[4] boldly
claimed that ‘feminism was dead history’[5]. She
explained that women winning the vote in America in
1920 accepted their victory, and so to them feminism
need no longer exist. Controversial Australian theorist and
journalist Germaine Greer revealed her position on the
women’s movement in her 1971 book The Female
Eunuch. Less than a decade after Friedan’s claim of
acceptance Greer contested that feminism was over and
openly embraced a second wave. According to Greer
there had been no improvement for women’s rights
through Parliament and most jobs were extremely
underpaid. Greer disputed the term feminism explaining
that it had become a way for women to respectfully fight
for equality, however this brought with it a level of
acceptance to the gender oppressed society. Greer’s
outspoken and quite frankly ballsy use of language was
teeming with anger, she openly discussed intimate
relationships and menstruation, topics which had agency
then, and still carry today. Her work remains a potent
lesson in how the exposure of suppressed or repressed
narratives can activate and afford momentum in support
of progressing positions, and offers through reflection
urgency to that in relation to current gender identity and
orientation issues.
[1] Gamble,S. (ed.) (2001) The Routledge Companion to
Feminism and Postfeminism. 3rd Edition. London:
Routledge. p. vii
[2] IBID p. viii
[3] Hodgson-Wright, S. (2001) ‘Feminism: its History and
Cultural Context: Early Feminism’, in Gamble, S. (ed.) The
Routledge Companion to Feminism and Postfeminism.
London: Routledge, p. 6
[4] Psychologist and journalist Betty Friedan arguably
wrote one of the most influential books in feminist
history. Her own personal experiences motivated her to
express the need for women to be better educated and
say no to domesticity, arguing that this was the only way
women could escape patriarchal limitations.
[5] Friedan (1965) quoted in Thornham, S. (2001) ‘Second
Wave Feminism”, in Gamble, S. (ed.) The Routledge
Companion to Feminism and Postfeminism. London:
Routledge. p. 29
An Introduction to Feminism
104
105

Euan Lynn
euanlynn@gmail.com | http://euanlynn.tumblr.com
My work uses skateboarding – both as subject and as artistic process –
to explore ways in which people perceive and interpret their
environments. Skateboarding highlights how it’s possible to re-read
and radically redefine the most mundane of spaces, altering the
insignificant aspects of architecture into something that transcends its
intended purpose.
Referencing classical minimalist artworks, Kerb Composition invites the
viewer to experience it by moving around and through the concrete
blocks. Built from readymade kerb stones with the surfaces marked by
skateboarding, the installation allows the viewer to redefine these
ubiquitous concrete forms, prescribing an alternative use to them as
skateboarders do. Expanding on these concerns, Environment seeks to
subvert the clichés of skateboard videos, offering an alternative visual
aesthetic by shifting the focus from spectacle moves to moving
through an environment. A wider interest in the histories of punk and
skateboarding subcultures has led me to produce zines by
photocopying. This format, often used as a DIY political platform, is a
way to pass on my work to other people. Through making zines I have
become interested in the mechanical aesthetics of photocopiers and
the production of high contrast, grainy images.
‘Kerb Composition’, 2015 (concrete)
‘Environment ‘, 2015 (video still)
‘Murals, Waterloo’, 2014
Euan Lynn
106
107

Melissa MacPherson
melissa.vipavadee@gmail.com | 07572 340152 | www.melissavipavadee.com
The oppressed woman conforming to be accepted socially. The primal
woman who is ready to scream about it.
I am concerned with alternative ways of documenting the female
experience and the female body. My cross disciplinary practice mirrors
that of the multifaceted feminist movement to which I am strongly
aligned. I have attempted through my work to celebrate universal
female identity by holding workshops and creating safe environments
in which other women can talk openly without fear of patriarchy.
Bringing individuals together and opening a dialogue has allowed me
to help other women to reconnect themselves with their bodies, as I
have started to do myself through experiments, performance, and
working with other artists. Around these charged conversations of
female gender politics I have introduced the male voice into my work
as a way to exert tension and inject comedic representation. Alongside
this I have adopted traditional female craft techniques to produce
awkward sculptural works, stitching and stuffing female underwear into
bulging, warped objects.
‘Untitled’, 2015 (underwear stitched onto red
satin sheet 127 x 90 cm)
‘Studio Fun Time’, 2015 (artist working in studio)
‘Dear Cunt’, 2015 (installation, video and audio displayed on 10” Ikegami broadcasting monitor)
Melissa MacPherson
108
109

Emily Matthews
emily.matthews93@hotmail.com | 07950 042850
Technological advancements are radically changing our society. Social
media has warped and distorted the real world by creating online
contexts where people are not themselves. The overuse of technology
has put us in a repetitive, monotonous mode where we are screenwatching,
constantly connected beings, continually accessing
information. Through this our perception of the world has altered, and
our desire to be connected through a digital self has intensified. Using
lens based media and collage my work is a response to this escalation
of online social cultures.
‘The Information Bomb’, 2015
‘Who Say’s Romance is Dead’, 2014
‘We Proudly Serve’, 2015
Emily Matthews
110
111

Liz McDade
liz.mcdade@outlook.com | 07891 445989 | lizmcdade.viewbook.com
My practice is fuelled by political, social and cultural
issues surrounding gender identity, gender
constructs, and sexuality. I create ethnographic,
performative works, within which I explore myself
breaking constructed gender boundaries through
the means of an alter ego. I draw influence from an
ever growing set of sources, Drag Queens, Drag
Kings, Club Kids, Sadie Benning, Claude Cahun, Frida
Kahlo, Ana Mendieta, Aurora Reinhard and Heather
Cassils. I respond to the fact that these individuals
have radically defied the physical appearance of the
male and female norm.
For me performing is a kind of out of body
experience. I brand my performative self as my
opposite, and use my bedroom as the setting.
Chosen for its privacy, privacy broken by the camera
and film lens, the performances are private until
reviewed, edited, and burned to disc or printed as
images onto paper. Privacy allows my alter ego to
overcome my ego, and the separation of personas
remains, as it is my ego that dictates what, if
anything, is made public from the performance.
Performing as my alter ego allows me to express my
thoughts and feelings surrounding societal gender
norms and what little space is offered to the queer
community.
‘Ode to Aurora’, 2015 (video still shot on Ilford FP4 film)
‘Prototype’, 2014 (screen shot, video
and audio HD 1080p)
‘Prototype 2, 2014 (screen shot, video
and audio HD 1080p)
Liz McDade
112
113

Daniel McGee
mcgeedaniel@outlook.com | http://dannymcgee.weebly.com
The camera is a mechanical device that interfaces
with light and time to create a record, an image, of a
moment, a happening. I disrupt the camera’s
mechanics by using multiple lenses to transform,
disfigure and layer images. Through these actions a
straightforward object can be turned into
something obscure and unidentifiable, an image of
an object appearing as something other. I have
used photographs taken in series as still film frames,
the time and movement of these frames oscillating
between image capture and reveal. Hidden in the
depths of an imperceptible space objects slowly
become visible within the turnover of images
before disappearing back into obscurity.
‘Capturing the Unknown’, 2015
‘Exosphere’, 2015
‘Boundary Projection’, 2015
Daniel McGee
114
115

Kitty McMurray
kittymcmurray@hotmail.co.uk | 07816 332605 | www.kitty-mcmurray.squarespace.com
Interventions in a space. The highlighting of a site.
Inside or out. These are fundamentals that underpin
the central conversations of my work. I use short
interactions, influenced by strong, repetitive,
brutalist architecture, to question the aesthetic of
surfaces and structures found in urban
environments. Through works situated inside and
out, I work only to represent, not reproduce, the
structural integrity and materiality, conscious not to
reproduce. Existing in multiple sites the works
progressive nature bring about notions of transience
and impermanence. In a continuous cycle of
experimentation my work conforms to the spatial
boundaries of its location allowing a continuing
dialogue between the work and the area which it
has been placed.
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
Kitty McMurray
116
117

Lucy Moss
la.moss@live.com | www.mercurialities@weebly.com
We drop.
Held in gravity’s levity
I forget the ground, forget my feet; bartered
For a little bird heart
Wingbeat heartbeat
Synced with the crank of this
Bird machine
And we were made fearless
Trusting in the stuff we make in breathing
Slamming into walls we make in screaming breaking
Into the house of some
Immaterial architect, who’s trying to slow our fall
But the ride never lasts; we stop,
Get off,
And learn to walk again.
Like a cheap watch, twelve o’clock
And a congregation forms around the burger bars,
the bins
Shedding sweat papers like a second skin
A sour smelling snake or
A hungry paper chain
Wanting back energy spent
In laughing, in screaming
It’s not a place of grace
But there’s beauty in the beast of it
Everyone smelling of candy floss
The burgers, they smell like the bins
But the crowds wane as the light fades
Me and him
We head home to the star park
Walking between the slant of the sun
To a shared tent, sipping a shared coke
Sharing a helix of DNA code,
Now
It’s bed time. What happens in a bed then
With hindsight I should have got a single but
I didn’t know those things about my brother, at
twelve
And feeling guilty that I ever consented
To sleep on a double mattress.
Oh I must have turned the lights off and sang him
onto the rocks
I must have sold my little siren heart
Because now this askless treachery
The sweaty hands of a full grown man
Seek to find those parts of me I never
Knew I had oh
My sweat glands freeze solid beneath my skin spider
crawls under
Shirts
Up the back
Clawing
Pawing
Undoing clasps hands on my
Neck hands on my
Thigh
Hands on my
...
‘What little hands’, 2015
Lucy Moss
118
119

ctrl-alt-space
by Julie Bemment and Kinnetico
CONTROL I create a conversation and site of
ambiguity. ALTERNATE Bodies move across the room
and catch the eye from a distance. SPACE In the
mirror I see myself where I am not. In an unreal,
virtual space that opens up behind the surface.
CTRL ALT SPACE was an exhibition by The Artholes at
Hoults Yard, Newcastle upon Tyne, February 2015.
CTRL ALT SPACE featured work from:
Nadia Baldini, Julie Bemment, Sophie Keith,
Kinnetico, Rosa Langran, Lotti Reid, Chloe Stuchbery
Lotti Reid
Nadia Raphaella Baldini
Kinnetico
Julie L Bemment
Chloe Louise Stuchbery
CTRL-ALT-SPACE an exhibition at Hoult’s Yard
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121

Kerrie Nacey
knacey@hotmail.com | kerrienacey.weebly.com
To prop wedge and jar
In a series of tests I push materials to their limits, air is compressed and architectural space becomes a frame in
which to draw. Using the studio as a place to explore the works conform to the dimensions it offers. Through
the testing of weight and balance they become their own supporting structures, and through their material
form they re-imagine the space. Their forms, piercing through the space, provide new function as tools to
prop, wedge and jar. I’m interested in materials that poetically, conceptually and linguistically sit apart from
each other, allowing the temporary situations created through their arrangement to become points of actual
or implied tension. The works establish relationships between the domestic and the industrial, the heavy and
the weightless, the inside and outside.
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘A-pealing wall’, 2015
Kerrie Nacey
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123

Nurain Omar
nurain-omar@hotmail.com | 07413 700776 or +673 8912160
My practice is about my negotiation of two different cultures, life in rural Brunei and my current everyday life
in the UK. I am investigating my current experiences in relation to the tribal Kedayan farming heritage of my
grandmother’s generation. I moved to the UK at the age of 16 and as I have adapted to life in the UK I have
become aware of my Kedayan culture and heritage fading away. I have been inspired by Tereza Buskavo’s The
Baked Woman of Doubice, Mona Hatoum’s letters from her mother Measures of Distance, and Gillian Wearing’s
overlapping video 2 into 1. Using photomontage and video I have been developing works by exploring
traditional Kedayan materials connected to its costume and dance, including, siraung padian (the hat),
tekiding (carrying basket) and kain sarung (skirt).
Re-enactment of Aduk-Aduk dance, 2015
‘Lost Kedayan in Newcastle’, 2015
Nurain Omar
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125

Katinka Stampa Orwin
katinkagraves@me.com
With the male physique being a powerful magnet for
sexual curiosity my work acts as an alluring and
dramatised study of how the virile male body plays on
the temptation of masculine subjectivity. The close up
fetishised segments of the male bodies I photograph
have a plasticity that contributes to a formal ideal and
leans towards a celebration of the male form. Their
staging, rich in dramatised lighting, directly confronts the
viewer with the physical presence of the male body;
while the sparseness from which the figures emerge
intensifies the photographic crops of the upper body
and slants the works towards moving image frames and
the cinematic. Playing on exposure, conventional
prudency and self-censorship, this voyeuristic blend of
soft and misty images remains erotically charged
through its suggestiveness, and these explicit
representations remain loaded with provocative intent.
‘Chest II’, 2014 (photographic print)
Katinka Stampa Orwin
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127

Sarah Jane Owen
sarah-owen@live.co.uk | www.sarahjaneowe8.wix.com/sjphotography
Place and memory. Through film I explore the
effects of deindustrialisation by observing the
post-industrial landscape. In this, North East
mining heritage proposes a poignant historical
reference point as its collapse continues to
affect the lives of those who once depended on
it so heavily.
On arrival at Easington Colliery in County
Durham I was greeted by a derelict school
building, which still in part shows signs of its
former grandeur and central position within a
now dispersed community. To many current
residents it is an eyesore, to others a bitter
reminder of the village’s demise. Seaside Lane,
Easington’s main street, is largely empty and
many of the buildings are shuttered. Further
along a freight train rolls past the old colliery, a
cruel irony. And finally I see the pit cage that
once took miners hundreds of feet below sea
level several times a day, year after year. It now
stands motionless on top of the hill, a bleak
monument left to the hands of the elements.
‘Untitled’, 2015 (video screenshot) ‘Untitled’, 2015 (video screenshot)
‘Untitled’, 2015 (video screenshot)
Sarah Jane Owen
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129

Charlotte Pattinson
c.jayy-x@hotmail.com
Threats posed to the environment by nuclear energy are accelerating,
whether through the increasing stockpile of nuclear waste, ageing
nuclear sites, or the threat of radioactive contamination. My interest in
this was sparked by my experiences growing up close to the Sellafield
Nuclear Plant in Cumbria. My family were affected by the Sellafield fire
in 1957 but they remained and still live and work in its shadows today. It
was a memorable feature in my childhood seeing its towers on the
skyline on my trips to the seaside.
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
Following nuclear power plant disasters at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl
and Fukushima Daiichi, the dangers of nuclear power are real and
present, and this creates fear, anxiety, and tension. Biased views from all
sides have led to the production of questionable material, exaggerated
maps, and manipulated photographic evidence by campaigners
desperate to gain supporters. However, research carried out by locals
and the government since these accidents provides evidence which
could possibly bring clarity to the issues. Mary Stamos, a Three Mile
Island local begun photographing and documenting plants in the area
after the accident. She discovered double headed clovers, three foot
long dandelion leaves and leaves and buds sprouting from the centre
of roses. All genetic developments which begun decades after the
accident. Research in the Fukushima area of Japan proves that issues
have already begun to form. Following the 2011 disaster, pale blue
grass butterflies in the area have shown dramatic deformities, with
irregularly developed wings and warped bodies.
Through my work I attempt to expand on this, not only by collecting
information found by others, but also by assembling my own evidence.
To this end I have gathered samples of dead butterflies found in my
home, and collected grass seeds and gorse bush flowers found close to
Sellafield. These have become materials in my work, directly combined
in handmade papers that I then draw on to. These drawings emerge
from a range of sources including emails, photographs, and direct
observations of plants that mimic illustrations found in old botanical
journals.
‘Untitled’, 2015
Charlotte Pattinson
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131

Josephine Peel
josephinepeel@googlemail.com
I am interested in everyday experiences and occurrences, and the photographic works I produce respond
directly to this and to my surroundings. I am trying to make the ordinary and understated visible by
evaluating the simple scenarios and ambient spaces within the world around us. I am drawn to
representations of nature both through its places and objects and through the coincidental, accidental, and
unexpected events that occur within it. My works attempt to reframe situations that might otherwise pass
unnoticed in their original context.
Wednesday afternoon, 12 photographs taken over a 1 hour period at a
5 minute interval.
Josephine Peel
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133

Samantha Potts
sam.potts94@outlook.com | 07515 522608 |
www.sampotts1994.weebly.com www.vimeo.com/sampotts1994
‘Weighting Game’, 2015 (two channel video installation)
Samantha Potts
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135

Skateboarding as
Artistic Practice
by Euan Lynn
Reduced to its bare essentials,
skateboarding can be considered
a reaction to an environment
–‘this is one of skateboarding’s
central features, adopting and
exploiting a given physical terrain
in order to present skaters with
new and distinctive uses other
than the original function of that
terrain.’[1] Skateboarding’s
progression since its invention in
the 1950’s has been defined and
driven by its relationship to
environments, and it is within this
relationship we can see an
argument for skateboarding as
artistic practice.
Production of space is key when
considering skateboarding as an
artistic practice. French
philosopher Maurice Merleau-
Ponty established ideas of ’body
space’ – ‘I am not in space and
time, nor do I conceive space and
time; I belong to them, my body
combines with them and
includes them.’[2] Merleau-Ponty
used the idea of body space to
explain how we experience the
world through interacting with it,
with our body as the
intermediary. Skateboarders,
when performing manoeuvres,
are therefore producing body
space. This could be said for any
other activity – footballers kicking
a football, a dancer moving
around a stage. However, when
skateboarding’s dependence
upon the architectural space in
which it’s performed is taken into
consideration, we see the body
space produced by the
skateboarder not as independent
from this space, but as a part of it.
Iain Borden describes this as
‘super-architectural space’. This
concept is key to thinking of
skateboarding as more than a set
of tricks to be performed, as how
the skateboarder, the movement
they are performing – and
therefore the body space they
are producing – and the
architectural space that they are
reacting to combine to produce
something unique. The images
accompanying this text
demonstrate this. They depict
two skateboarders performing
the same manoeuvre in
completely different architectural
spaces. On the left, Tony Hawk
performs a frontside aerial on a
purpose-built halfpipe ramp, on
the right, Jason Adams performs
the same move, but on a found
street object. This disparity in
architectural spaces means the
super-architectural space
produced by each skater is wildly
different.
These differences in space,
dictated by differences in
intention, differentiate each
skateboarder’s stylistic approach
from one another. The
challenging of the architecture
around them, and the
reinterpretation of the city’s
Tony Hawk performs a frontside aerial on
a half-pipe ramp in a desert. Unknown
photographer.
spaces demonstrates that the
attitude of skateboarders has
much in common with the late
1950’s movement The Situationist
International. Founded upon a
basis of psychogeography, a way
for ‘the city to be reinvented on a
personal level’[3], The Situationist
International, led by Guy Debord,
emerged from an earlier group
- The Lettriste International. It was
the LI who established concepts
of psychogeography, dérive and
détournement[4]. These would
prove incredibly influential
concepts within not only
geography, but art and
architecture – and in turn to
skateboarding. ‘In a dérive one or
more persons during a certain
Jason Adams performs the same move on a
found obstacle, demonstrating the importance
of architectural space in the creation
of super-architectural space. Rob Brink.
period drop their usual motives
for movement and action, their
relationships, their work and
leisure activities, and let
themselves be drawn by the
attractions of the terrain and the
encounters they find there.’[5]
The parallels between this
philosophy and that of
skateboarders is clear to see,
wherein ‘they reveal pathways
and obstacles which offer other,
more interesting and challenging
ways of traversing space.’[6]
Skateboarders seek out
alternative ways to use and move
through space – ‘...it develops into
a far more thoughtful way of
looking at your city. You look for
interesting bits of architecture
that can be skated in a unique
way’’[7] – often unintentionally
subverting the capitalist
intentions of that space.
‘Skateboarders, like everyone
else, are confronted with the
heightening intensification of
advertising in new places and
lines of vision. But in the face of
such commodification, street
skating does not consume
architecture as projected image
but as a material ground for
action and so gives the human
body something to do other than
passively stare at advertising
surfaces. Skateboarding here is a
critique of ownership.’[8]
Skateboarding, by its very nature,
serves to critique capitalism,
though more through effect than
intention. Much recent inner-city
construction is designed not for
people to relax in, but to
encourage them to spend.
Therefore, the use of this space
by skateboarders, focussing
simply on the architectural forms
and how they may repurpose
them, rather than the prescribed
use of the space, is inherently
anti-capitalist as it actively fights
against the intentions of the
space. These anti-capitalist ideals,
whether wholly intentional or
not, form the basis of
skateboarders’ attitudes to the
city and serve to tie
skateboarding’s ephemeral use of
city spaces to that of the
Situationist International even
further.
Guy Debord put forward in his
seminal work The Society Of The
Spectacle (1967) the idea that
society had been ‘devastated by
the shift from use-value and
material concreteness to
exchange value and the world of
appearances.’[9] When applied to
the situation I briefly described
earlier, the comparisons are
obvious, the inner-city plaza is
designed for exchange value and
appearances, where people can
appear to be relaxed and are
wrung out for their money.
However, the skateboarders are
only interested in use-value, that
is, how useful the space is to
them. Despite the Situationist
International’s dissolution in April
1972, meaning the society did
not exist at a time when
skateboarding was anything
other than embryonic, we may,
somewhat romantically, surmise
that skateboarders unwittingly
carry on their work, exploring
their surroundings and creating
abstract and super-architectural
spaces outside of the capitalist
world they work around.
[1] Borden, Iain (2001).
Skateboarding, Space And The City.
Berg. p29.
[2] Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1945).
Phenomenology of Perception, trans.
Smith, Colin (1962). Routledge &
Kegan Paul. p53.
[3] Ford, Simon (2005). The
Situationist International – A User’s
Guide. Black Dog Publishing. p33
[4] Ford, Simon (2005). The
Situationist International – A User’s
Guide. Black Dog Publishing. p33
[5] Debord, Guy. (1956) Theory Of
The Dérive. In: Costa, Xavier. (1996)
Theory Of The Dérive And Other
Situationist Writings On The City.
Museu d’Art Contemporani de
Barcelona.
[6] Jeffries, Michael; Jenson, Adam;
Swords, Jon (2012). The Accidental
Youth Club: Skateboarding in
Newcastle-Gateshead, Journal of
Urban Design, 17:3, 371-388
[7] Woodhead, Louis (2014) Who Has
A Right To The City? 4th November,
The Building Centre, London
[8] Borden, Iain (2001).
Skateboarding, Space And The City.
Berg. p239-243-247
[9] Ford, Simon (2005). The
Situationist International – A User’s
Guide. Black Dog Publishing. p102
Skateboarding as Artistic Practice
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137

Alexandra Pywell
alexpywell1@mac.com | 07873 596153
I use photography to document changes in nature
and the landscape, using these as mechanisms to
construct and recreate a narrative sequence. The
structure of the landscape remains stable but what
marks it out changes. The photographs allow things
that might not always be seen - even at the location
- to be visible and held. In this way the works
contribute to the memory and relationship we have
with a site and the landscape. I am interested in
disruption, understanding that the landscape is
defined by the constant changes to it, through light,
movement, weather patterns. I have experimented
using text with the images to create contradictions,
challenging meanings and composition.
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
Alexandra Pywell
138
139

Lotti Reid
lotti.reid@hotmail.co.uk | 07906 994739
I am interested in the instinctive and unnameable
connections that arise between the body and the
physical environment it inhabits. I am exploring it as
an object in dialogue with its environment,
negotiating permeable boundaries between its
inside and the outside it occupies. Within this I’m
interested in the body as both a place of encounter
and residence, that leaves it open to both occupy
and at the same time try to make sense of the
spaces in which it finds itself.
‘Untitled’, 2015 (performance to video - installation view)
‘Untitled’, 2015 (video installation)
Lottie Reid
140
141

Rachael Scorer
rachaelscorer@gmail.com | 07968 633962 | www.rachaelscorer.wordpress.com
I am interested in documenting contemporary
working class lives through photography as a way to
respect and move beyond existing, often negative
or broad stereotypical vantages. My close family and
their lives are my subjects, and in amassing new
photographic images of them my agenda is a
political one. Through being an observer and a
witness I want to show the authenticity of working
class people, in so much as, ‘this is who we are’ and
not ‘this is who you think we are’.
‘Untitled’, 2015
Rachael Scorer
142
143

Nancy Seary
nancyseary@googlemail.com | 07446 404792
I create works based on my own observations,
thoughts, and encounters surrounding the idea
of being a feminist within a contemporary
society, by re-configuring craft methodologies
as high-art. My practice involves subverting
traditionally gendered materials such as fabric
and thread, and processes such a sewing.
Through this I push the boundaries of longestablished
crafting methods to create playful
yet awkward objects. Each piece has its own
identity and at the same time becomes part of a
larger conversational exchange. Within the
works I use processes of deconstruction,
manipulation, and decoration to suggest the
forms of human anatomy. Through this I aim to
create an introspective space which examines
and questions gender roles and female
identities. I also use text in the works as both a
research tool and a medium. I steal, borrow, and
invent quotes and statements, recording and
scribbling them in notebooks. I am constantly
observing and listening to the world around me
in order to document my findings and support
new works. By commenting on perceptions of
women through visual objects and text, I want
to open the viewer’s eyes to the everyday
liberations and hindrances attached to being
female within contemporary society.
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
Nancy Seary
144
145

Patrick Joseph Stansby
patrick.stansby@btinternet.com | 07854 991978
Using photography I investigate and document the
processes and rituals of farming, land management,
and rural life. Here death is seen and accepted, and
is maybe even needed, and pageantry and costume
leads into dance and ritual storytelling. The
photographs are unfussy in their observation,
positioning people, animals and the land in a
changing set of relations and everyday situations.
‘Grouse shooting in Northumberland’, 2015
‘Feeding the Sheep’, 2015
Patrick Joseph Stansby
146
147

Joanna Street
joannastreet123@gmail.com | 07757 131141 | http://joannastreet.weebly.com
Light is a catalyst in my work. I distort the perception and blur the boundaries of a darkened space through
the manipulation of light and sound within it. The lack of visibility and orientation in the spaces I create
challenges traditional viewing experiences and immerses visitors within a constructed total environment. The
perceptual experience of the viewer is integral to my work, and I am interested in how the participant’s senses
are stimulated. The use of everyday objects, such as cheese graters, alongside other materials and perforated
metals transform and disperse light into new forms, creating unfamiliar conditions that unsettle the everyday
environment. Combining the familiar with the constructed transforms and elevates the mundane into
something more sensational. In encountering this the viewer is separated from the outside world and taken
into a new and artificial environment, shifting the ordinary into the unknown.
‘Grater Light’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015 ‘Grater Light’, 2015
Joanna Street
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149

David Thirlwell
david_thirlwell@hotmail.com | www.coroflot.com/davidthirlwell
“The nefarious activities of the
gang of Winters are too well
known, and unhappy the effects
have been too much felt,
particularly in the western parts of
Northumberland, and struck so
much terror into the minds of the
inhabitants as to excite the highest
destination and abhorrence of that
vile community, and called forth on
this occasion universal
indignation.”
Winter Gang Broadsheet August
1792.
My work operates through the
lens of crime and police forensics.
I use investigative techniques to
create a charged atmosphere
and situation for the viewer
through sound, sculpture, and
photography. These are used to
generate fragments of a narrative
that while derived from an actual
crime becomes both a fiction
and truth of it. The work is a
revisiting of the story of William
Winters and the crime he
committed on the night of the
29th August 1791.
‘Foundation’, 2015 (digital image)
‘Gibbet’, 2015 (digital image)
‘Victim’, 2015 (digital image)
David Thirlwell
150
151

The Stranger LARP
(Live Action Role Play)
www.visiblepsychology.co.uk
Visitors to the Northumbria University
12-15 Degree Show will be invited to
participate in an on-going Live Action
Role Play (LARP) for the duration of
the show.
Character profiles
All players in this LARP will be human beings born in
the mid to late 20th century.
Unlike human beings living in subsistence
conditions in the third world, Players will all be
occupants of the comparatively much wealthier
western world. They will therefore enjoy a relatively
more privileged lifestyle with plenty to eat,
comfortable clothing and access to sophisticated
entertainments.
They will also be politically free and, whatever they
may like to think about their personal circumstances,
any limitations in their social lives will be largely of
their own making. Within the laws that govern our
society and socially accepted norms, they can
choose to act as they please and do what they want.
Players may alternatively choose to smile or
acknowledge other Players with the light formal
social greeting normally extended to strangers in a
safe neutral environment – a smile or a nod.
Players may on the other hand want to reject
contemporary western social norms and
experiment with a less orthodox stranger greeting
(such as a military salute, a raising of a hat –
assuming one is being worn - or by the giving of a
romantic fairytale bow or curtsey).
Players could even ‘up’ the interaction stakes by
choosing to ‘get physical’ with complete strangers
experimenting with warm double handshakes or big
hugs of affection.
And of course Players can choose how to respond to
approaches from other Players in the game.
• engage with the other Player enthusiastically with
a responding hearty hand shake or hug of
affection.
• react in some unexpected manner (such as by
putting out the tongue; blowing a raspberry;
saluting; giving a bow or curtseying theatrically in
response to their greeting; by doing a little comic
dance etc).
How Players choose to behave will always be
entirely their own choice. Those who are used to
such role-play will understand that the more they
personally invest into the game, the more they are
likely to get out of it. ‘Playing to lose’ often creates a
much more interesting game and is more rewarding
than ‘playing to win’.
LARP Etiquette
Roles in the LARP
All Players in this LARP will be assuming the roles of
visitors to the 2015 Degree Show exhibition being
staged by final year Fine Art students at
Northumbria University in Newcastle.
If someone smiles or acknowledges them for
example, they may:
• choose to blankly ignore the other Player or turn
away to make the other Player feel uncomfortable
and show that they are superior to them.
The game organisers request that all Players in this
LARP show respect for other Players at all times. If
another Player does not want to engage, this is
entirely their choice of character role in the game
and is a choice that should be respected.
Game Instructions
Players will be invited to wander around looking at
the art on display in their own time. Throughout the
exhibition they will encounter other Players in the
game. How they, and other Players, choose to play
their respective roles will stimulate various types of
Player Interactions.
For example:
Players may choose to demonstrate their complete
fear of strangers, or feelings of social superiority, by
completely ignoring other Players they encounter in
the game.
• stare at the other Player pointedly to show their
shock at the willingness to break the western
social taboo of moving outside a strictly defined
‘stranger exclusion zone’.
• choose to be highly affronted by any excess of
familiarity shown by any other Player and respond
with a warning reaction suchas a raised finger, a
shout of fear; or even the extremes of a physical
punch or slap.
• just smile timidly back at the other Player in an
embarrassed way, demonstrating that they are ‘not
prepared to play this type of game’.
This Live Action Role Play has been brought to you
by Visible Psychology Inc. © 2015
www.visiblepsychology.co.uk
The Stranger LARP
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153

Murray Thompson
thompson.murray@yahoo.co.uk | 07738 821930 | www.flickr.com/photos/69478198@n02/
My photographs are from the everyday world but
they seek to break its monotony, becoming alive and
alert both in and of themselves and in the collective
juxtapositions that are generated when I show them.
I generate the photographs through the
straightforward act of walking, taking a psychogeographic
approach of drifting, as a way to
breakdown rationalised journeys – moving from A to
B. The speed and directionlessness of the movement
and journeying enables me to become deeply
immersed in any given environment I might
encounter, and through this provides me with the
space to explore it intensively. I am interested in the
phenomenology of urban spaces and in how my
actions themselves become part of the environment.
And while the photographs generally lack human
subjects they do however consistently allude to a
human presence, acting perhaps as a gateway into
an apocalyptic future, or as a message from a
collective unconsciousness.
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015 ‘Untitled’, 2015
Murray Thompson
154
155

George Unthank
unthankdesign@aol.com | 07547 455194
Digging Deep Into Cultural Identity
Cultural identity is the focus of my practice, relating
to the North East of England and beyond, and
aligned to the concept of ‘ruin’, in the past, the
present, and in its relevance to the future. This is
expressed through the making of charcoal drawings,
paintings and printmaking – excavating the
elements in the medium, and metaphorically, in the
environment and landscape. Charcoal, as well as
being used by artists, was used in the smelting of
good quality iron and steel fuelled by
Northumberland and Durham coalfields, and
leading to the development of the shipbuilding and
engineering industry. The iron ore from Cleveland
Hills was also the site of red ochre from which I have
used the raw pigment in making paint. Ochre was
used in the earliest known cave painting and has
been associated with medicine and ritual purposes
for millennia.
The materiality of memory is embedded in the
industrial landscape and its communities, which
with their rich traces of ritual dance, song and music
traditions have been a life inspiration for me when
participating in visual art and performance,
particularly through song. Within my practice I
explore the challenges of reproducing ambiguous
realist images from archive film, in charcoal that
feeds the production of large scale drawings and
abstract prints. With the transformation of elemental
raw material into figurative and abstract work, I am
exploring materiality, and the transition of moving
from one medium to another is the alchemy of
process. The mediums and the processes, exposed
as part of a regional cultural identity, speak to and of
ordinary people in the global village.
‘Shipbuilding’, 2013 (charcoal on Fabriana paper)
‘Transition.1’, 2015 (acrylic, oil on canvas 200 x 140cm)
‘Transition 2’ , 2015 (monoprint, ink on Somerset paper 56 x76cm)
George Unthank
156
157

Samuel Joshua Walker
samjwalker92@hotmail.com | 07568 597460
I am interested in portrait photography as an accurate way of capturing a person’s character. Before
photographing an individual I spend time getting to know them. This helps me to decide how to take the
photograph and how best to portray their personality and character. This might mean I get close with my
camera or it might mean that I may use a prop to visually support their profile. I have focussed my work on
individuals in either Newcastle or the Isle of Man from a range of social backgrounds and professions.
‘Steven Gallagher’ (Known as Gaggs) -The Whitestone Inn, 2015
‘Ian Cottier ‘- Ex-Headmaster Isle of Man, 2015
‘Juan Hargraves - Sheep Shearing’ (local farmer, Isle of Man), 2015
Samual Joshua Walker
158
159

Rebecca Watson
becky_watson@live.co.uk
The recurring themes in my work are fear and death. My practice
engages with how we process anxiety and trauma and find ways to
manage phobias. Parts of my work explore an autobiographical, with
the most common themes emerging through ideas of tension and
destruction. Other works connect into the anxieties and fears that
others face. I use digital formats and video installations to project
images and footage into dark spaces, connecting into and amplifying
fear, psychological trauma and suspense.
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015
Rebecca Watson
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161

Chris Welton
chris.welton@alpha-ra.co.uk | 07581 393001 | www.chriswelton.co.uk
Up to the age of about two years old we are not fully self-aware and cannot discriminate between others and
ourselves. In fact the first lie you tell is an important indicator that you know that others cannot read your
thoughts.
By three years old we begin to have others in mind when we behave, and as we continue to age our selfawareness
develops. But we never fully separate ourselves from our surroundings, and involuntarily
behaviours like body language mirroring are physical indications that our identity continues to be
subconsciously framed by our circumstances and those around us.
My artistic practice is an existential journey, which considers how the ‘negative spaces’ of life - the
surroundings in which we exist and respond to but don’t control - define our identity much more rigidly than
any frail, artificial, lines of self-image we might draw for ourselves.
In the context of the omnipresent ‘framing’ delivered by today’s permanent online social connectivity,
moderated by postmodern angst about what we can trust, I investigate ‘presence’ and the powerful impact of
its absence. I challenge issues of authorship, time, relationships, and narrative to draw attention to our
constant struggle with the morphing spectres of identity, and the ‘unknown unknowns’ that frame us all.
The Stranger LARP is a meta work created for the 20-15 Degree Show under the pseudonym of Visible
Psychology Inc., itself an online pseudo organisational identity ostensibly created to explore human
behaviours and the implications of personal identity.
www.visiblepsychology.co.uk
‘Goldspink Lane’, 2015 (detail)
‘Goldspink Lane’, 2015. (immersive installation)
Chris Welton
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Hope Whittington
hope.whittington@btinternet.com
Dear person,
I will make you isolated and alone but part of the
strongest team.
Archive image
Archive image
Your energy will be weak, the struggle to continue
will be instant.
The hope for the future will be endless.
The sound will consume you.
Your thoughts will deafen you.
Your family will call you.
Your country will need you.
The bangs, the explosions, the shots, the fights.
This was all your doing it was not mine.
There are no rules to this game, there is no hiding.
I will make you and break you just the same.
You will seek forgiveness when it is given.
Do not be afraid for I am your mission.
I do not care, it is not my choice.
You chose me. I am simply the devil you created.
Yours faithfully,
War
Archive image
Hope Whittington
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Yuanpu Xia
xiayuanpu25@yahoo.com or contact@paulxiaphotography.com |
07702 048135 | www.paulxiaphotography.co.uk​
The decisive moment involves capturing the right
expression and emotion in the subject. Photography
is viewed as an art of observation. As a documentary
street photographer, I constantly try to chase the
decisive moment. It is usually part instinct, intuition,
preparation luck, and skill. Decisive moments make
the viewer not only see but feel in their mind
whatever is in the photograph. Sometimes the
mood of the scene can change even in the absence
of colour. Black and white reveals the inter-tonal
relationships within the images. Images in colour
evoke a different appreciation and response from
the viewer. The large-scale photographic montage
concerns memories. It represents many memories
throughout our lives; people who have passed away,
a city view, humorous walks down the street. These
images were taken on the streets of London and
Newcastle over two years (2013 – 2014), through my
eyes, and with my camera recording every moment.
‘Memories’, 2013-14
Yuanpu Xia
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167

Georgia Young
georgiayoung_1324@fsmail.net | http://georgiayoungart.tumblr.com
Animation is in many ways a less conventional form for an art practice to take. My use of animation developed
from an interest in drawing and image making, the graphic as well as the surreal, and my work has ultimately
became a combination of various styles. My animations often reflect darker ideas around the uncanny but
also some more light-hearted themes. I feel that this mixture of tone and style is important as it allows the
films to move from one process of animation to another. The work uses the movement of inanimate objects
and drawings to explore a fantasy world, frequently without too much focus on a conventional narrative.
Objects and photographs collected from family members feature in some animated sequences but their
origin is not apparent within the work itself. In this way the objects collected are similar to a cabinet of
curiosities, and take on a life of their own within the work.
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Untitled’, 2015 ‘Untitled’, 2015
Georgia Young
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Thomas Zielinski
thomaszielinski94@gmail.com | 07985 624913
I look, I shift my vision, I’m aware but I chose to
ignore. I look forward. I continue talking but the
conversation feels strained now. A thin veil
separates us but the division is there. I hear but I
don’t respond. I keep looking forward. I continue
walking.
I take temporary banner structures into the city to
occupy specific places, doorways and alcoves, for
short periods of time to stand in for an individual
and become their surrogate within the space. The
lo-fi makeup and scale of the banners alludes to
protests signs, while its gold and silver surfaces draw
connections to symbols of wealth and success. The
sun reflects off the surface, and like a magpie’s gaze
an individual’s attention and curiosity is drawn
through the banner into a space they wouldn’t
ordinarily necessarily look towards. The silver and
gold metallic surfaces create void picture planes, as
well as mirroring and reflecting fragments of the
surrounding space. Propped and standing upright
the banners serve primarily as a memorial
of absence.
‘Resident Displacement’, 2015 (foil blanket, timber)
‘Untitled’, 2015
‘Resident Displacement’, 2015 (foil blanket, timber)
Thomas Zielinski
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Northumbria Fine Art
Auction 2015
by Samantha Potts
A sophisticated evening of Fine Art,
entertainment and good company…
Situated at the iconic Baltic the 2015 Northumbria
Fine Art Auction approached a level of
professionalism beyond the expectations of a
student auction. With donated artwork from artists
associated to Northumbria such as Kate Hawkins,
Alice Browne, Helen Baker and Graham Dolphin, this
event was really not one to be missed.
The evening of art and entertainment set a
performance from artist Lucy Moss and a traditional
sword dance by the Addison Rappers alongside over
70 Lots of contemporary artworks. Not only did the
auction reflect the high level of ambition by the
current third year students but it also provided an
insight into the thriving studio culture at
Northumbria University, offering an advanced
snippet of what to expect in the Fine Art degree
show on Tuesday 16th June.
Hosting such a diverse range of works from both up
and coming and established artists, it came as no
surprise that the evening was a great success, raising
over £3,000 to support Northumbria’s graduating
artists, helping to support future projects and the
production of this very publication.
Event photography by Angharad Croft &
Patrick Stansby
Artist Name
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12
Acknowledgements
The 12-15 artists would like to thank the following for their help and support over the last three
years; specifically for fundraising, the preparation of the Degree Show and the production of the
12-15 catalogue and website.
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Tutors and Technicians:
Paul Barlow, Mike Booth, Sian Bowen, Evie Boyle, Paul Brown, Kevin Burdon, Alfons Bytautas,
Chun-Chao Chiu, Fiona Crisp, Charles Danby, Chris Dorsett, Keith Ellison, Angela Ferguson,
Malcolm Gee, Simon Gregory, Alex Harbord, Paul Helliwell, Dan Holdsworth, Ysanne Holt,
Allan Hughes, Angela Hughes, Sandra Johnston, Sharron Lea, Ronan McCrea, Keith McIntyre,
Tom O’Sullivan, Ginny Reed, Jason Revell, Sunghoon Son, Sue Spark, Brian Stokoe , Joanne Tatham,
Sheila Trow, Alan Williamson, Mick Wootton – and all of the other Northumbria staff in support
and administration.
We would also like to extend our gratitude to the host of companies, galleries, artists and venues
which have supported us over the last three years. With a particular note of thanks to:
Ampersand Inventions
AONB
Baltic and Baltic39
B&D Studios
Customs House
Gallery North
Great North Run Culture
Hoults Yard
Matt Stokes (Stone Frigate LARP)
Minerva Academy of Art (Holland)
Messums Art Gallery, London
Newbridge Project Space
Nicola Canavan and participants of ‘RAISING THE SKIRT’
Northumbria Healthcare (Hospital Arts Programme)
Participants of the ‘(RE) CLAIM’ Workshop
Star and Shadow Cinema
The Tyneside Cinema
Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums
Vane
The Workplace Gallery
The advice and the opportunities you have given us have been integral to our development as
emerging artists and we look forward to working with you in the future.
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