Erin Dickson

Erin Dickson is a sculptor. She initially studied Architecture at the Architectural Association in London and later went on to complete both her MA and PhD at the University of Sunderland. Dickson’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at Glasstress, The National glass centre, The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and FACT in Liverpool. She has received international grants and awards including an Honorary Diploma from the Jutta Cuny Foundation, Germany, and a National Lottery Project Grant from Arts Council England. 

Dickson explores tongue-in-cheek themes of ‘Britishness,’ particularly in relation to her birthplace in North East England. She works in the space between craft and digital manufacture, operating both physically and virtually to develop systems of correspondence. Through humour, her sculptures, videos, and installations deliberately soften provocative subject matter, including British class systems, AI bias, intimacy, community, and isolation.

www.erindickson.co.uk

@erin.dickson

Demdike Stare

Demdike Stare is an English dark ambient and electronic music duo based in Manchester. The project was formed by DJ Sean Canty and producer Miles Whittaker in 2009. Their mixtapes and albums blend a wide range of genres including Jazz, Library music and industrial. The duo have developed their sound throughout the journey of the project. 

@demdikestare

corbin shaw

Based in Bethnal Green, Corbin Shaw (b.1998) is a Sheffield-born artist and Central Saint Martins graduate, exploring themes of personal & national identity, modern-day folklore and masculinity through his multimedia practice.

Collaborations include Women’s Aid, BBC Sport , Fred Perry & The Pet Shop Boys. His work has been featured on cover’s for EXIT, Perfect Magazine and Circle Zero Eight . As well as features in The Guardian, The Face, Dazed, Metal Magazine and the Talk Art Podcast. 

Corbin Shaw presented his fifth solo show, 'Eurotrash' at Spazio Maiocchi, Milan as an examination of the nuanced identity of Britain in the wake of Brexit. His fourth London solo show ‘Little Dark Age’ at Incubator, Marylebone, explored modern day Britishness through ancient crafts, questioning the meaning of tradition and what it means to be ‘English’ today. ‘The People Fled When The Sun Went Down’ showed at Jealous, Londonin 2023 where he pulped and recycled stolen copies of the sun newspaper to hand-make the paper for 22 original prints. He uses tabloid headlines against themselves in a mission to expose the hypocrisy of the British tabloids. In 2022 he presented 'Nowt as Queer as Folk', Guts Gallery, London, where he explored Folk Law and tradition in comparison to his South Yorkshire Village. Also in 2022 Corbin showed 'Martin Parr & Corbin Shaw' at OOF in London, where his work was shown in collaboration with legendary British artist Martin Parr to pay a homage to the Football Fan. Corbin has exhibited at the design Museum as part of 'Designing the Beautiful Game'. As well as at OOF alongside artists Jeremy Deller, Douglas Gordon, Lydia Blakeley and many more.

www.corbinshaw.com

@corbinshaww

Bex Massey

Bex Massey’s work examines the role of painting and the language of display in the face of popular culture. They amalgamate simulacra and allegory to investigate notions of ‘worth’ via motifs and tones extracted from their childhood. Massey’s previous works and exhibitions have engaged the codes and history of queer culture, along with markers of selfhood and Northern identity. Recent works have become visually softer, more sedate and uncomfortable as the unease and ‘value’ in this series is created via the relationships between the minimal conflations. 

The image pairings within these paintings encourage allusion to female bodies, building an underlying sexual tension imbued by the artist into quotidian objects. Compositionally the couplet mirror each other and their visceral epicentres form a visual echo.  This is further extended by an implied auditory element as the scenes contain the potential of noise, whether it is the moment a cat yawns or a fizzy drink explodes – force in one image is released in its partner. 

These climactically coupled, female laden, tension imbued depictions are a nod to societies persistently binary notions of gender and therein the habitual reminder that outside the male gaze, Female + Female = Incorrect. Maseys recent fertility journey with their partner has brought this into sharp focus, and this process is alluded to in the titles of canvas which are named after the sperm donors they have considered. This additional layer encourages the work to be viewed via a reproductive lens.

Bex Massey courtesy of Seventeen.

bexmassey.com

@masseybex

Lily-Grace Dawson

Lily-Grace Dawson is a contemporary painter based in the North East of England, most specifically Sunderland. A graduate of the University of Sunderland, Dawson received the New Graduate Award after curating part of her degree show that presented her distinctive visual language and thematic approach. Her work explores the intersections of identity, femininity, and psychological complexity through an uncanny, surrealist perspective. 

Informed by a neurodivergent perspective, that shows in her painting style, Dawson’s painting practice is marked by a fragmented and textured painting technique that challenges conventional notions of relationships and beauty, allowing the art to embrace the raw and ugly. Her degree show at the University of Sunderland expressed the initial and early exploration of these themes, laying the foundation for a working practice that embraces vulnerability. 

Beyond the studio practice, Dawson has been making attempts to contribute to the regional art community through roles like invigilating local exhibitions. This includes a recent exhibition at 36 Lime Street, an art venue in Newcastle. Being an emerging artist is a vital part of her identity and she is committed to building a sustainable creative career by actively seeking accessible opportunities, supporting inclusive networks and trying to implement her own practice that is socially engaging with the themes of societal expectations. 

Lily-Grace Dawson’s work exists in a liminal space where sweetness distorts into the grotesque, and innocence becomes a protective veil for something more deeply rooted. Through a surrealist-inspired practice, she explores themes of femininity and relationships, interrogating how individual perceptions and social expectations consume raw truths and conceal harsh realities. Her use of plush toys and childlike figures contrasts sharply with darker, more mature subject matter, often resulting in uncanny and unsettling imagery that invites discomfort and confusion.

The fragmented, tactile, and unfinished quality of her paintings reflects her experience as a neurodivergent artist. Rather than striving for polished visual harmony, she embraces a more chaotic and nonlinear methodology that allows for the creation of a larger volume of work. For Dawson, the texture of the paint becomes a form of language, and imperfections serve as a powerful mode of expression. This approach transforms neurodivergence into a strength, amplifying recurring themes of defiance and complexity within her practice.

Her new portfolio marks a shift toward more immersive formats, with plans to scale up her paintings and develop dominating installations. This next phase will continue to examine cultural tropes and gender performance, critiquing the ways in which femininity is infantilised and hyper-sexualised. Ultimately, Dawson’s work aims to confront viewers with visual contradictions—cute yet grotesque, innocent yet provocative, seductive yet repulsive.

@lilygracedawsonart

Bethany Dallas

Bethany Dallas is a multidisciplinary artist based in the North East. She graduated with first-class honours in Fine Art at The University of Sunderland in 2025 and hopes to continue her studies on the Visual Practice MA course later this year. Over the past two years, Dallas has focused on creating a concise visual identity between herself and her work, blurring the lines between practice and person. In 2024, her short film ‘Back and Forth’ was exhibited in the Baltic Open Submission in association with Fenwick.

Recently, Bethany Dallas has been experimenting with fabric-based sculpture. Using traditional women’s crafts like embroidery, crochet and sewing juxtaposed with more masculine industries like tech. As a working-class, fat woman, she consistently draws from her lived experience to inform her work, usually exploring themes of identity. She believes that art can never be truly apolitical, and her practice is rooted in the idea that representation in art for marginalised people is vital. This influenced her interest in women’s craft and how craft interacts with contemporary art. Her work is deeply personal, yet no experience is completely unique, and it is important to her that people feel seen and validated within each piece.

@b.ethanydallas

Faye Magkanari

Faye Magkanari’s work stems from a need to explore how Orthodox religion connects to memory, culture, and her experience as a woman. Growing up in Greece, religion was woven into everyday life-shaping how people behaved and what they believed. While she is not especially religious, she remains deeply aware of how faith influences social norms, particularly around gender. Her work reflects on this complex mix of personal belief, tradition, and inherited expectations.

These themes continue to affect and inspire Magkanari, though she is also curious about where her practice might evolve-exploring ideas not always tied so directly to religion. Broadly, she is interested in the body, especially the female body, and in symbols that are easily recognised and widely accepted, regardless of their form. She works across clay, casting, metal, and wood, though she primarily identifies as a ceramist and secondly as an interdisciplinary artist. Rather than delivering a clear critique or telling a single story, her work seeks to open up space for reflection on what we inherit, what we carry forward, and what we quietly resist. Whether her work makes viewers feel uneasy or understood, she hopes it invites them to sit with the complicated intersections of faith, womanhood, and cultural memory.

@my_makin

Lauren Shilling

Lauren Shilling’s themes include transformation, memory, decay, and preservation. She uses discarded objects, often vessels for more desirable acts or purposes - packing materials, old rendering, insulation, upholstery foam, cardboard boxes. She collects discarded objects that are usually widely manufactured or objects that take up the ‘negative space’ on either side of a more desirable object. She often refers to them as vessels. The objects are initially familiar to the viewer, yet through modification, Shilling reframes them to create a space of discovery. She transforms the objects in various ways, such as latex castings, constructing metal frames and photo transfer.

By using objects that were destined for landfill, this speaks of the endless churn of material production, consumption and depletion that characterises this current era. Shilling also incorporates elements of personal memory, contrasting sentimentality with objects that carry no emotional value. She finds it interesting that people think she has bought or even made some of her found material, highlighting the power of transformation through these fabricated processes. The found objects hold the same weight within the sculptures as their crafted counterparts, blurring the line between found and fabricated. Shilling thinks that today’s readymades are often about reclaiming and reusing, not just recontextualising objects. In a world facing a climate crisis and resource scarcity, using waste materials can be seen as a form of resistance or healing.

@lshilling_

Elliot Kitchener

Elliot Kitchener is a visual artist and graduate of Northumbria University, where he refined his draughting skills and developed a strong foundation in the arts. During his studies, he gained valuable experience by exhibiting his work at the Baltic as part of his cohort’s degree show and working as an invigilator in local galleries, experiences that deepened both his technical abilities and his understanding of the art world.

Elliot’s practice is an ongoing investigation into modernist design, with a particular interest in the movement’s ideas around reduction and the essential role of drawing and sculpture in generating abstraction. His work begins with imaginative, almost automatic sketching, from which reduced modernist structures emerge. Over time, he has developed a variety of recurring motifs - often inspired by the forms of animal skulls - which he experiments with through loose, iterative drawing. Selected forms are then further developed into more refined, often larger-scale renderings that evoke a tangible sense of presence. Deeply influenced by Henry Moore, Elliot draws upon Moore’s approach to automatism and selective development, using it as a framework for his own process. The resulting drawings are sculptural in nature - simulations of unrealised objects that sit at the intersection of concept and form.

@elliot.kitchener

Charlotte Baldwin-Hay

Charlotte's artistic practice focuses on the transformative act of self-decoration. She is interested in the relationships connecting pain and glamour. Charlotte's practice involves a process of layering multicultural symbols of power to illustrate a universal recipe to empower oneself. To create her textile pieces Charlotte sources second-hand women's clothing to tie her to a female audience, which also aids her work to be more sustainable and unique, depending on what she can find. Using textile-based arts connects Charlotte to a lineage of women who inspire her work, further allowing the work to be viewed through a feminine lens. As an artist, she is drawn to beads and sequins to represent the ‘precious’ objects we layer onto ourselves to cultivate power. The comforting nature of quilting and the brutal mechanical nature of the piercing needle speaks symbolically about her themes, exploring the connection between pain and glamour.

Through her work, Charlotte enjoys worldmaking and storytelling; she combines a blend of history and modern-day culture to produce playful narratives where women hold all the power and look fabulous while doing so. Throughout her work, the tiger is a continuous symbol of power, prowling alongside fierce female characters in her femme fantasy world.

Charlotte has recently graduated with a first-class honours in Fine Art from Northumbria University, resulting in the opportunity to exhibit her work in the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Arts. Through the New Graduates award with Middlesbrough Art Week, she is exploring new ways of working post-graduation.

@charlottebaldwinhay_art

Carl Truscott

Using fine art as a vehicle for broader philosophical explorations, Carl Truscott’s work is concerned with fundamental questions about the nature of art itself. What constitutes art? What is it for? How do we understand it?

Using a multi-disciplinary approach, Truscott attempts to tackle the universal challenges of artistic representation and channel them through a personally constructed philosophy that cynically groups art theory with ‘superstition’ and our natural tendency to draw lines of significance between unrelated things. The readiness of those in the art world to engage in this sort of ‘magical thinking’ demonstrates a fascinating phenomenon in the minds of both creator and viewer, and offers an opportunity to explore the possible tensions between an artist’s intent and the viewer’s subjective interpretation.

Truscott’s current work attempts to navigate that tension by concentrating on the importance of context when viewing art. How much of our analysis of a piece in a gallery is primed by the other works around it? Or by the curator’s vision for the show? Or even by the information we already know about the artist and their work? Truscott explores this relationship by engaging personally with the artists he exhibits alongside, amalgamating their myriad influences, compounding them with his own, and attempting to create an expansive ‘art-object’ out of the exhibition itself.

@carltruscott.art

Clare Massey

Clare Massey was born in Tyne and Wear and is now based in County Durham, where she lives with her daughter. She graduated from The Northern School of Art with a First Class BA Hons in 2025 and will be continuing her Education, completing a master’s in art practice as an alumni.

@clare.massey.art

Elen Murgasova

Elen Murgasova is a mixed media artist based in Middlesbrough, her work investigates the intricacies of the human experience. Working primarily with family photographs and collage, she explores how personal histories such as childhood memories, cultural backgrounds and societal influences contribute to shaping individual identity.

Previously, Elen has gathered art teaching experience alongside a non-profit charity organisation “Harmony” in her hometown. Elen is a graduate in Fine Art from Teesside University and is currently working towards a teaching qualification in Art and Design.

@e.m_art444

Zaeemah Bashir

Zaeemah is a multi-disciplinary artist who recently received her Fine Art degree from Teesside University. She received the New Graduate Award and has shown at Pineapple Black, Python Gallery, Constantine Gallery, and MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art).

Her practice spans a range of mediums, with recent works incorporating acrylic painting, laser cutting, and cyanotypes. She is drawn to experimentation and continually explores new materials to expand her visual language.

During her third year, leading up to her degree show, her practice began to focus on the emotional and physical experiences of migration. Her work explores the challenges, resilience, and quiet strength that arise through displacement and the process of beginning again.

A recurring symbol in her work is the flower, representing movement and transformation. Like migrants, flowers are uprooted, carried and replanted in unfamiliar places. Even seeds travel by wind, water, or time. Carrying with them the potential for renewal. This poetic imagery speaks to an ongoing process of adaptation and survival.

The theme of migration is deeply personal for her as the child of a first-generation immigrant. Her work serves as a response to her mother’s journey, honouring both the struggle and the beauty that comes with change. It invites viewers to reflect on identity, belonging, and the quiet power of resilience.

As an emerging artist, she continues to explore how material and metaphor can communicate personal and collective stories of movement and growth.

@zaeemah.art_

Zara Saghir

Zara Saghir is an Assistant Producer for The British Textile Biennial (BTB) and The Super Slow Way (SSW)—a place-based cultural programme working with communities across East Lancashire. BTB explores the politics of cloth in the post-industrial landscapes left behind by the cotton industry, engaging with communities that have textiles woven into their heritage. SSW delivers an ambitious programme of artist commissions and residencies, collaborating with people, partners, and heritage sites to reimagine a 20-mile stretch of the Leeds–Liverpool Canal as a new Linear Park for Pennine Lancashire.

In her role as Assistant Producer, Zara has supported a wide range of cultural projects, contributing across planning, administration, installation, workshops, and community engagement. As a socially engaged artist herself, she understands the importance of fostering meaningful, collaborative relationships between artists, communities, and artworks.

Through her own creative practice, Zara explores taboo issues within her British South Asian culture, interrogating systems of power, values, and hierarchy. She draws on her personal experiences to create

space for voices that have been overlooked or silenced—helping them to be heard and encouraging advocacy through art.

Zara is currently developing new photographic works as part of a month-long residency in Islamabad, supported by The British Council, Art of Small Talk (Islamabad), and Insitu (Pendle).

“As a Pakistani woman born in England, I’ve grown up with a deep appreciation for my cultural roots. I feel a strong responsibility to engage with women who have been shaped by similar narratives. I am reaching out in the hope of connecting with the women you work with, as I believe their stories and lived experiences are invaluable.”

Her artistic practice centres on how women uplift one another and create spaces for honest, empowering dialogue—whether through shared struggles, achievements, or reflections on the journeys that have brought them to where they are today. She is particularly interested in speaking with women who have fought for their rights and hearing their hopes for future generations.

Following an enriching research residency in Islamabad—and winning The Blackburn Open 2025, where her work was acquired for a permanent collection—Zara is now focused on expanding the photographic, video, and audio works she created in Pakistan. With the support of curatorial guidance, she aims to shape this into a cohesive solo exhibition.

As an artist of Asian heritage, she is driven by the potential to create challenging yet inclusive work that better reflects the rich diversity of Blackburn’s creative community.

Mrs Khan explores marriage, gender roles, and cultural identity, blending sharp humour with moments of quiet reflection. Rooted in both South Asian and Western heritage, the exhibition questions who holds power in rituals of union and what it means to challenge, subvert, or reclaim those roles. Artist Zara Saghir explores taboo issues within British South Asian culture, interrogating systems of power, values, and hierarchy. Drawing on personal experience, she creates space for voices that have been overlooked or silenced, using art as a tool for advocacy, care, and cultural activism.

@zara_s94

Hira Butt

Hira Butt is a British Pakistani artist based in Birmingham, England. Born in 1987, Butt migrated to England from Lahore, Pakistan, after completing her Bachelor's in Fine Arts in December 2009. Since then, Butt has worked on and off in different creative fields. In 2016, Butt got the opportunity to study Fine Arts and relished the chance; she stretched herself as an artist and completed her master's in 2018 by winning the Master's Degree Prize in Medium Practice, Birmingham City University.

Through her installations, Butt’s work explores ideologies of gender and cultural dominance, modern slavery, domestic violence, and the place of South Asian women within marital and domestic spaces. Butt is also interested in the occidental impact on oriental cultures and their political, social, and psychological effects on the eastern diaspora. Finally, through personal experience and conversations with several South Asian women, Butt seeks to critique both the wedding day and the life promised that often does not materialise.

Butt often uses carefully selected mundane domestic objects, bejewels them and transforms them to give them a new identity while maintaining their originality.

www.hirabutt.com

@hirabutt.art

Azraa Motala

Azraa Motala is a visual artist from Lancashire, her multidisciplinary practice spans large-scale oil painting, photography, video, poetry, and site-specific interventions. Exploring the intersections of identity, culture, and belonging through the lens of her experience as a British South Asian Muslim woman.

Her work is grounded in a critical exploration of empire, history, and the politics of representation. Through a reclamation of space and narrative, she challenges orientalist portrayals of women in art and interrogates the legacies of colonialism that continue to shape contemporary cultural discourse. Increasingly, her practice is concerned with the role of place in shaping identity. Recent work reflects a growing engagement with rural England as a site of both personal reflection and wider historical resonance. Drawing connections between the landscapes of Britain and the diasporic memories of migration, heritage, and displacement, considering how natural environments can hold and reflect layered narratives of exclusion, belonging, and cultural identity.

Motala is committed to socially engaged practice, often working collaboratively with communities to foster dialogue and creative exchange. Her work not only examines what it means to navigate the world as a woman of colour in Britain today, but also contributes to a wider reimagining of British art and landscape traditions from a decolonial perspective.

www.azraamotala.com

@azraamotala

Alina Akbar

Alina Akbar (aka Lean) is a Visual Artist, Writer, Curator and Storyteller: Working in film, photography and installation. Wandering between both digital and analogue mediums.

Using her lens and words to create art from both personal and cultural experiences as a British-born Pakistani. With a particular interest in authentic and ethical working-class representation and issues of diversity in society, shown through her cinematic eye for capturing raw reality intertwined with poetic narratives, often as a self-producing and self-shooting director.

www.alinaakbar.xyz

@lean0161

A Man Called Adam

A Man Called Adam are a British music duo, Sally Rodgers and Steve Jones. The Duo have been making electronic music since the late 80s. Coming back into the spotlight in 2019 with their album ‘Farmarama’ they have performed live at many festivals including Gilles Peterson’s We Out Here and Kala Festival in Albania.

The duo explore diverse musical influences but always sounding recognisably themselves. They avoid defining their style but have produced tracks that are in the genes such as Jazz, Basware and Nu British house.

www.amancalledadam.com

@amancalledadam_hq

Furtherfield

Furtherfield is an artist-led community arts organisation and gallery based in Finsbury Park. They create and support global participatory projects with networks of artists, theorists and activists. Their mission offers a chance for the public to present their own views and enter or alter various art discourses. 

Since late 2020, they have been immersed in the massive Interspecies Treaty LARP as part of their participation in the EU Horizon 2020 funded CreaTures project. All participants advance more-than-human justice by playing the game as other species, representing them in Assemblies to discuss and plan an Interspecies Festival that will celebrate the signing of an Interspecies Treaty of Cooperation in 2025. Treaty was conceived by Ruth and Cade Diem, launched in Finsbury Park, and is now available to be fully adapted and played anywhere. 

We’ve been collaborating with Furtherfield for FiP:ARR (Futures in Play; A Radical Reimagining) a project which aims to empower communities in Middlesbrough by fostering imaginative, participatory, playful spaces where local voices can shape collective futures. 

Furtherfield have been co-creating with local communities a speculative role-play game called Chamber LARPs (Live Action Role-Playing scenarios), FiP:ARR will amplify underrepresented voices, explore and experiment with alternative futures, and transform collective agency into pathways for radical reimaginings. The project will consist of a series of workshops, community visits, development of a new and unique LARP game, and public presentations at Middlesbrough Art Week.

www.furtherfield.org

@furtherfield