Meet the artists: (Un)making Place Residency, LCT 2022

UK New Artists is delighted to introduce you to the selected artists for the ‘Placemaking’ residency as part of our City Takeover in Leicester. The artists represent a range of art forms, from theatre to drag to socially engaged art, and a breadth of practices, exploring migration; queerness; colour; history; comedy and more.

The Placemaking residency will consider the geo-politics, social histories and cultural identities of Leicester, while investigating how anyone can ‘make’ a place. Artists will traverse the city and its spaces, connecting with community groups and exploring archives and architecture.

Christian Bell

Two people stand facing each other, holding umbrellas over their heads in the forest.

Christian is a research-led, multi-disciplinary artist and recent graduate of the BA Fine Art (hons) degree course at Blackburn University Centre. Through his own personal interrogation of socially engaged and place-based research, Christian has developed a collaborative approach to delivering interventionist contemporary artworks. Christians most recent work explores and critiques the notion of 'Placemaking' through the methodological process of working with communities on site-specific projects and collaboratively excavating and re-imagining collective memories of place, youth and cultural reference.

Matthew Dowell

Matthew Dowell was born in Sunderland, UK in 1994. He studied Fine Art at Kingston School of Art (2013-16) and Print at the Royal College of Art (2018-2020), was shortlisted for the Gillian Dickinson North East Young Sculpture (2019) and is the recipient of the Stanley Picker Print Tutorship (2021). Recent exhibitions include London Grads at Saatchi Gallery (2020), Graduate Show at Kristin Hjellegjerde (2020), Beyond the Frame at Orleans House Gallery (2020), In Review at Southwark Park Galleries (2020), and 2020: Insight at Soho Revue (2019).

Pepa Duarte

Pepa Duarte is a Peruvian actor, theatre-maker and drama facilitator based in London. After a decade of performing and making theatre In Peru, Pepa moved to the UK to further her training in devising and physical theatre, graduating from MA Theatre Lab at RADA in 2018. Since then she has performed for companies like Bric à Brac, Popelei, Head for Heights and La Fura Dels Baus. “Eating Myself”, her latest one-woman show, was awarded by Arts Council England and supported by Peruvian Embassy, CASA Festival and BAC. She currently works as a drama facilitator for Old Vic Theatre and Tender & Education and is the director of the Southwark Playhouse’s Young Company.

TomYumSim

TomYumSim (Tom Halls & Simone French) are an outrageous performance duo that challenge conventional notions of theatre and rebel against the mainstream. They connect on a desire to interrogate interactive and immersive performance and are known for transforming unusual and diverse spaces into bespoke theatrical environments. Creating queer, absurd, frenetic theatre, they put the audience’s experience at the centre of their work seeking to ignite a new generation of theatre goers by making interactive shows that are relevant, edgy and outlandish.

Madara VimbaJanuary 15, 2021artists, magazine, M3