Meet the New Artist Collective 23!
Each year, as part of Taking Place, UK New Artists will work with a dynamic, contemporary and exciting group of new artists selected from a nationwide call-out, who are within the first 10 years of professional practice and will be working together for the first time.
New Artist Collective is a cross-disciplinary group of artists who are within the first 10 years of professional practice, from all artforms, across the UK. Each artist in the cohort receives a bursary along with opportunities to present and create new work and work deeply in the place through micro-residencies exploring themes and creating connectivity. They also have access to a programme of talks, workshops and resources and the opportunity to collaborate, share and network with the other artists in the collective and beyond.
The New Artists Collective 23 has 17 artists, who are working collaboratively for over a year as part of UKNA’s first iteration of Taking Place embarking on an exciting journey in Lincoln; sharing their work, undertaking residencies and collective activities, and taking part in training, networking and mentoring.
Tyler Barker
Tyler Barker is a performance artist and videographer who captures glimpses of everyday life. Her work frequently explores themes of intimacy, created space, and closeness. This is fabricated with the help of her participants, through the use of storytelling. She leans on her interest in sociology to explore the concept of personas, and the barriers we create regarding our perceptions of reality. There is a voyeuristic thrill behind her art, often her stories draw on the inspiration of very intimate moments in her everyday life, relying on performative action to instil a sense of belonging and feeling of trust. Using her work as a tool to invite viewers to witness her version of reality, using intimate and exposing methods. Priding herself on getting a true depiction of those involved, seeing every piece as a collaboration and an opportunity to make something beautiful and representative of those involved.
Emelia Kerr Beale
Emelia Kerr Beale is a Nottingham-born artist based in Glasgow. They work across drawing, sculpture and textile to process the complexities of illness and hold discrepancies and contradictions together in tension, creating moments where discomfort/pleasure/anxiety/joy coexist and interact. Through the use of motifs and text, they consider how imagination and repetition can be coping mechanisms. Their practice pushes for more expansive understandings of illness that reject neat categorisations and binaries. Emelia's research is rooted in queer theory and feminist disability studies, as well as lived and embodied experience.
Emelia graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2019. Recent exhibitions and projects include Platform, French Institute, Edinburgh, (2022); TH4Y, GENERATORprojects, Dundee (2020); Tonic Arts Life Under Lockdown commission for Western General Hospital, Edinburgh (2020); Bathing Nervous Limbs, Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh (2021); and Disability Arts Online and Attenborough Arts Centre support commission (2021). Recent residencies include The Bothy Project, Isle of Eigg (2019); The Royal Drawing School Artist Studios, Dumfries House, Cumnock (2019 and 2021); and Hospitalfield’s Graduate Programme, Arbroath (2021-2022). Emelia is drawn to things that create space for collective (un)learning, and contributed to In Session fka GRADJOB (2019-2020); Eastside Project’s The Exchange (2020); and The Newbridge Project’s Collective Studio (2021-2022).
Johan Beavis Berry
Johan Beavis Berry is a recent music graduate from the University of Surrey, specialising in site specific work, found sounds and soundscape and the effective blending of these mediums with more conventional musical instrumentation/synthesis. Their thesis focused on the creation of a 'musically enhanced' soundwalk around the university campus, where key sociospatial, environmental and acoustic phenomena were highlighted through immersive live musical performances along a carefully considered route. Berry’s interest is increasingly turning towards folk culture and the preservation of tradition and locality, with ongoing project ideas including capturing the ambience of abandoned local churches as well as spoken word work with the Gloucestershire/Worcestershire dialect. Additionally, they are in the process of setting poems by lesser-known victorian poet A.E. Housman to music, interspersed with rural soundscapes. In a 'contemporary classical' sphere, Berry seeks to draw attention to topical issues - e.g. a piece for choir and bees to highlight environmental threats to pollinators. Stylistic eclecticism is central to their work.
Jack Boal
Jack Boal is a performer and theatre maker from North London. They make work that is inherently political and entertaining. Engaging audiences to create dialogue on the present and future through clowning and interactive performance.
Boal aims to blur the forms of cabaret, live art, and theatre to communicate these topics and create work that moves between formal and informal performance spaces. From Summerhall in Edinburgh, The Glory and Camden People's Theatre in London, and all the way to The Gothenburg City Theatre.
Boal’s debut solo project, Thatcher-Rite sees the audience invited to Mrs. Thatcher’s very own traditional English tea party. With lip-sync, clown, and verbatim theatre, the audience are encouraged to bring their anger or admiration in the comforts of cake and cucumber sandwiches.
Their next project, The Children are Leaving explores the climate crisis climate as Grace Fool, an out-of-work clown, faces her final hour all on her own. Or so she thinks. On Earth's final night, something more life changing than the end of the world sets Grace Fool on an unexpected journey of revelation and hope.
Jack’s practice has been supported by artsdepot, Camden People's Theatre, Raze Collective, The Glory, Something To Aim For, and HighRise Theatre.
Polly Brant
Polly explores art as a common; a shared space intended for everyone and bringing art into the everyday. They are interested in building common spaces, connections and supporting art education. The outcomes of their research are realised through a selection of processes which have included text, posters, use of space, collaboration, and textiles.
It’s an on-going process of connections that Polly wants to continue to grow through meeting people, learning, and making:
Materials – To learn through making.
Space – To be made common.
People – To occupy space and make use of things.
Polly’s practice imagines “ordinary and intended for everyone” (Politics of trespassing,2011) types of space where you could make it your own and use it as you wish; perhaps to just sit and drink tea or maybe gather with others to make something happen, the space is there for you. In the words of Allen Kaprow “situations for a happening should come from what you see in the real world, from real places and people rather than from the head”.
Ronnie Danaher
Ronnie Danaher (b. 1996, Leicester) is an artist working predominantly in video and installation. Her work is informed by the humour and pressures of her experiences growing up in a large Irish Catholic family, along with meme and internet culture. Her current interests are the British relationship with data and how this is situated within the Catholic traditions of faith, sin, confession and absolution.
Based in Leeds, Danaher is a studio holder at Assembly House in Armley. Latest exhibitions include iConfess at Assembly House in June 2022, which was reviewed by corridor8; arebyte on Screen for arebyte Gallery in 2021 following taking part in arebyte’s hotel generation programme in 2020; and a showcase following a residency at The Art House in Wakefield in February 2020. She has exhibited internationally in Marseille, Barcelona, Moscow, and across the UK.
Yasmine Dankwah
Yasmine is a British-Ghanaian spoken word poet, playwright and performer, who hopes to subvert the rule ‘show don’t tell’ by exploring and platforming the individuals and narratives of those who are often used ‘for show’ within the media. She is a graduate of the Writing for Performance course at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She was also part of the Soho Writers' Lab during 2021/2 and is currently part of the London Library Emerging Writers programme as well as a member of the National Youth Theatre as of this year. She is a recent recipient of a digital commission by the theatre company Chronic Insanity, to develop her spoken word poem i love hip-hop but i think he hates me into a full-length play. Outside of her work in poetry, theatre and performance, she has had experience working in the music industry, having interned at the Black Music Coalition, as well as Notion Magazine and Sound Connections as a writer. Overall, Yasmine is really excited to tell stories that platform both the joy and resistance that marginalised communities experience, through rhyme, music and storytelling.
Alice Hackney
Alice cares about the connection between people and the landscapes that surround them. In her practice, she combines scientific precision and inquiry with ideas of homeland and community to make herself a place within the systems around her - biological, generational, social, cartographic - and explores the simultaneous strength and vulnerability of our natural world. She imagines that every patch of earth is someone’s special place, and she would love to introduce you to hers.
Alice holds a first class BFA in Fine Art from The Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford (St John’s College). Previously, she completed an Art Foundation at Manchester School of Art, where her piece Memorial for Hyde won the award for best work in the foundation show.
Alongside this, Alice is a founding member of The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities' Art Biodiversity and Climate Network, and is the co-director of art collective MIXER//SHREDDER, a collaborative making and discussion group, with which she exhibited at Modern Art Oxford’s EMPRES The Art of Noises festival. Currently she is also a performer in Marina Abramovic's Gates and Portals exhibition.
T.S. Idiot
T.S. Idiot is a multi-disciplinary artist, writer, creative producer and facilitator based in Bristol and working across the South West, working with arts organisations and local communities across a range of projects.
They are a qualified youth and community worker with additional training in mental health, diversity awareness, social engagement and event production, all of which feed into their creative professional practice as an artist.
As an artist and writer they have produced theatre and live art, published poetry and short stories, created films and audio and produced interactive events and multimedia installations. Their work is exploratory, process-led and seeks to explore collective experiences, identities and histories playfully and collaboratively.
They are passionate about listening to, and engaging with, the experiences of those who are unheard and marginalised through creativity, empathy and informed support. They are also a proud spokesperson as someone who is queer, Jewish and working class - much of their work involves encouraging more conversations, awareness and advocacy for marginalised experiences and communities.
Aayushi Jain
Blending introspective poetry with soulful vocals, Aayushi's songs are strikingly tender. With support from the likes of BBC 6's Fresh On The Net and A&R Factory, her music has graced Spotify's 'The Most Beautiful Songs in the World' and 'New Music Friday UK' playlists, as well as popular YouTube channels such as MrSuicideSheep. Her 2015 collaboration with electronic producer Dillistone has been played over 4.5 million times on Spotify alone, subsequently sparking a host of self-released singles. With over 30,000 monthly Spotify listeners, her digital fanbase continues to grow.
In 2020 Aayushi's poem 'Whale Song' won second prize in the Jane Martin Poetry Prize, and her short story 'Lighthouse' was published in the Write Across Canada Anthology. She has since performed at venues such as O2 Academy Birmingham, Warwick Arts Centre, and Symphony Hall. She most recently played festival sites across Birmingham in support of the Birmingham Commonwealth Games 2022.
Some of Aayushi's most successful performances have been in spaces such as meditation retreats and nature reserves. Her recent work has explored the space between poetry and music through collaborations with local Birmingham poets, supporting the likes of Birmingham Poet Laureate Casey Bailey and multiple slam champion Jasmine Gardosi.
Georgia Preece
Georgia Preece is an artist, poet, writer and workshop facilitator based in Lincoln, she is Visual Director and Environment Editor for Radical Art Review and an MA Fine Art graduate of the University of Lincoln.
Preece’s artistic practice is rooted in political discourse and human emotion, developed from a body of ongoing research, she uses diverse methods of visual practice to explore topics such as: the performativity of protest, working classness and the claimant, environmental concerns, and the liminal space between classes occupied by the working class graduate.
She has recently developed a series of workshops that she has been delivering to creative groups in Lincoln and online to facilitate group and individual manifesto writing, allowing participants to reflect on their practice and create space for hopes and aspirations.
Zara Sands
Zara is an artist working with dance, film and sound. In 2019 they graduated from Trinity Laban Conservatoire with BA (Hons) in Contemporary Dance and has since been working as a performer and artist, exploring where dance and visual art overlap. Zara is interested in inarticulable experiences, our understanding of categorisation and where meaning lies unacknowledged within movement. They have created work shown by platforms such as Channel 4’s Random Acts, BFI Southbank, Royal Academy Lates, videoclub, Birmingham International Dance Festival, AIR Gallery, and soon Nunnery Gallery.
Meanwhile, Zara is a passionate teacher. They have facilitated their own public outreach workshops, guest taught class at Trinity Laban, and they work regularly teaching movement in nurseries and ballet to young people, infants and their grown-ups.
SLQS
SLQS is a Franco-Vietnamese artist living in East London. Her work is provocative: it questions the politics of space and who is excluded from it. She reclaims space by immersing herself and others in the public realm. SLQS makes and holds space as a woman, a person of mixed heritage, a foreigner, a mother, an artist and an equestrian. She invites her audience to decolonise spatial orders from imperialist, sexist and racist structures. She works in a wide range of media that includes, but is not limited to, performance, live art, photography, writing, mapping and visual art. Her practice is unrestricted and includes being a performance maker, a walking artist, a producer, a curator and a workshop leader. She is the co-creator of the performance making company Convex. Through immersive sound experiences, they give voice to threatened environments.
SLQS has presented work at Totally Thames, Spitalfields Music, Rich Mix, Procreate Project, the Live Art Development Agency, the Royal College of Art, the Brunel Museum, the Migration Museum, the Attenborough Art Centre and the Museum of the Home.
Sam Tahmassebi
Sam Tahmassebi b.1985 (London, United Kingdom) is British Iranian neurodivergent artist, from a single-parent working class background, working in a range of mediums. Influenced by questions of society, psychology and philosophy, and their interconnectedness, as well as value and duality.
Chaosmotic, his current series, explore the effects of the Internet, social media and commercialism on consciousness and reality.
He is the recipient of the Road to Rio Award from the University of East London and National Portrait Gallery. Also, a finalist for the Concord Art Prize and Robert Walters New UK Artist of The Year.
Harrison Taylor
Harrison’s practice is varied in its methodology, research and output, but veers towards the propositional and suggestive. Working through film, sculpture, installation and text, their practice both confronts and evades as they present ideas, narratives and propositions that convey what they see and feel, as they grapple with what is spoken as to what is left unsaid.
Taylor recently graduated from the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, and is currently an artist and writer living and working in London. They have exhibited in Paris and Oxford, and my work has been collected by the Bodelian Library Special Collections. They have taken part in an art and science collective in Oxford called the Flute and Bowl for two years.
Kim Thompson
Kim Thompson is a Nottingham based painter and illustrator.
With recent projects including 'The World Reimagined' (Commissioned Globe Painting Artist for Hackney, 2022), 'The Polite Exhibition' (Commissioned Artist, The Portico Library, 2021) and In Reality, These Things Need to Be Said (Resident Artist, Backlit Gallery, 2021), Kim’s work often centres narrative archiving, Black joy and empowerment via otherness.
Oliver Ventress
Oliver Ventress is a video and installation artist who has a primary concern with the idea of Being as a Medium; evidential documentary footage and romantic pursuits to capture isolated natural landscape and existence on tape. Works have included a series of attempts to make contact with aliens, the formation of a UFO spotting network, a para-terrestrial seance and the documented seeking of a sea monster.
Working with rudimentary analogue technology and with concerns of an uncertain future, the documents occupy a physical space in plastic casing, away from the instability of cyberspace and digital corruption. They wait to be discovered by our successors: human or otherwise. Footage is recorded data: it exists post-event, attempting to provide evidence for something which is unproven, or unidentified. Video files and documentary films in cassette tapes produce a linear timeline or pathway of a journey set in time. Placed onto monitors or framed as stills they become objects to be encountered, providing a visual investigation into movement; presence; potentiality.
Recent work consists of a quest to capture visual data from elements of human experience to translate into indestructible objects, which will be left behind ready for the future extraterrestrial invasion of the Earth.