Meet the New Artist Collective #3
Building on the success of our People, Place, and Practice programme, in 2025 UK New Artists (UKNA) will launch a test of a new multi-site format. This new and exciting iteration of the programme will see 16 artists take part in micro-residencies across four locations in the East Midlands; Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln, and Worksop.
UKNA launched the first iteration of the People, Place, and Practice programme in Lincoln in 2022 with a year-long initiative, followed by a six-month programme in Derby in 2024.
In 2025, we will be mixing things up. Working in groups of four, artists will participate in micro-residencies happening simultaneously across four East Midlands locations: BACKLIT (Nottingham), Artcore (Derby), Barbican Creative Hub TBC (Lincoln), and Harley Foundation (Worksop).
Selected Artists
Each year, as part of the People, Place and Practice programme, UKNA works with a dynamic, contemporary and exciting group of new artists selected from a nationwide call-out. We are excited to announce the 16 artists selected as part of our New Artist Collective #3 - meet the selected artists below!
Image by Pete Martin Photography
Sarah Al-Sarraj
Sarah Al-Sarraj is a British-Iraqi visual artist and cultural worker working with painting, comic books and immersive technologies. Her narrative-driven work employs speculation and fantasy to subvert and surpass global power structures. Researching Islamic and native knowledge systemsm Al-Sarraj constructs and imagines new worlds rooted in land, spirit and ancestry. Her comic book ‘Sinkhole’ was selected for New Contemporaries 2022, and in 2023 she was awarded a grant from Arts Council England to develop her animation practice, for which she is currently working with the Mechatronic Library. Her first solo exhibition, ‘Separated by Millennia’ opened at Two Queens Gallery in 2024, commissioned by the Arab British Centre. Alongside her artistic practice, she has a background of 8 years working in social justice with organisations such as Healing Justice London and Forensic Architecture, and broader work in Palestinian advocacy. She currently serves on the board of trustees at the Inclusive Mosque Initiative, an intersectional feminist abolitionist mosque.
Instagram: @ssaarraahj
Image: Koko Loop Station - Jameela Elfaki
Koko Brown
Koko Brown is a Black-mixed, Queer, Disabled, Artist & Producer who blends theatre, spoken word and music throughout her work. She takes pride in her roots and creates work about being ‘the other', focusing on race, mental health, gender, and identity.
Her debut play, WHITE, featured in The Guardian as one of their “Best shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival” and Country & Town House named Koko one of their “Ones To Watch: Best New Playwrights”. You can find WHITE and her most recent 5-star, BSL integrated play, GREY, via Koko’s website.
Koko has worked with the National Theatre, Latitude Festival, Soho Theatre, Brainchild, and Glastonbury Festival and international performance collective Hot Brown Honey. Koko is a newly qualified Audio Describer for Theatre & Live Performance and aims to continue making all her work #AccessibleAsStandard.
Instagram: @theKokoBrown
Jeremy Chih-Hao Chuang
Jeremy Chih-Hao Chuang is a Taiwanese artist based in Taipei and London. Jeremy focuses extensively on the interrelationship between home and self-identity from an autobiographical perspective, which he derived into a subjective language that uses photography to engage in visual contemplation. With his studies and art, he predominately concentrates on the integration of interdisciplinary media, sculpture and installations, specific bodies and spaces with photography.
Instagram: @jeremyhao.chuang
Maya Rose Edwards
Maya Rose Edwards (they/them) is a participatory public sculptor.
In 2023, completing the Mount Stuart Artists Residency; their project TWOFOLD, explored the connection between queer/rural identities on the Isle of Bute, resulting in a series of permanent works. They are the recipient of the RSA New Contemporaries Selection 2023 for which they received the Chalmers Award, Creative Scotland Youth Arts Bursary 2022, Steven Palmer Travel Bursary 2023, and were a member of the 2023/24 cohort of The School of the Damned. They are currently undertaking a 6-month public art commission on Stranraer’s abandoned waterfront whilst undertaking research into pre-history across Scotland, undertaking a geology-focussed residency at Marchmont House in 2024.
Their practice spans participatory public sculpture, intervention, text, and a range of visual output with a specific focus on accessible arts and everyday culture. Maya has shown work at over 20 locations across the UK.
Instagram: @mre_arts
Oliver Getley
Oliver Getley is a Leeds-based interdisciplinary artist. His expanded sculptural practice is concept and process driven. He uses collaborative and improvisatory techniques to experiment across projects using sound, technology and site-responsive exhibition making. A central concern of his practice is the creation of sculptural encounters through a ‘reverse engineering’ of objects and sites, using formal approaches to found material.
Site Built (2023) explored the rapid redevelopment of Mabgate, Leeds. He developed performance workshops with local students to co-create instruments and scores, then re- designed those prototypes as kinetic sculptures that spread throughout the gallery. He has since moved towards ideas of ‘non-sites’ and a focus on industrially-produced objects being re-used in art, particularly as this connects sculpture to mechanical and digital technologies.
His practice is emergent and interested in artist-led, DIY working and alternative learning methods as politicised approaches to culture-making. Recent self-directed projects and development programmes include, Freehold Project (2019-20), Into the Wild (2020) and Sculpture Network (2022). He has shown across the UK, including at Leeds Art Gallery (2023), Eastside Projects (2022) and Camden Art Centre (2022).
Instagram: @o_getley
Image by Jonathan Turner
Hannaa Hamdache
Hannaa Hamdache is an artist and curator of mixed English and Algerian heritage from Nottingham, UK. Based in Leeds, she holds a BA (Hons) in Fine Art and Art History from Kingston University London and an MLitt in Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) from the Glasgow School of Art.
She works to make the arts open for all through the use of humour and education. Her practice explores the idea of play: playing with context, the exhibition and the everyday. Currently, she is investigating her own personal context and heritage through family archival photographs, film and food.
Hannaa has been commissioned to create new works by different arts organisations including The World Reimagined, Liverpool Arab Arts Festival (LAAF) and the Arts Council Collection as part of Lubaina Himid’s ‘Found Cities, Lost Objects’ at Leeds Art Gallery in 2024.
Recent exhibitions include: Leeds Artists Show 2023, Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds (2023); TWO QUEENS, TWO SCREENS, Two Queens, Leicester (2022); Liverpool Arab Arts Festival, Exhibition Research Lab, Liverpool (2022) and NAE Open, New Art Exchange, Nottingham (2022), where she won the Public Choice Prize. She is also a member of the Creative Thinktank at UK New Artists.
Instagram: @hannaahamdache
Angharad Jones-Young
Angharad Jones-Young is a contemporary dancer, performer, choreographer and teacher who grew up in Snowdonia, North Wales. She studied at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance (2017-2021) before going on to join National Dance Company Wales as an apprentice dancer (2021-2022). There, she toured works by Andrea Costanzo-Martini, Anthony Matsena and Caroline Finn. Angharad then became a company dancer with ACE dance & music - a contemporary/afro-fusion company based in Birmingham - where she toured both nationally and internationally, performing work by Vincent Mantsoe, Gail Parmel and Serge Coulibaly, and also working with choreographers Kennedy Junior Muntanga, Miguel Altunaga and Jamaal Burkmar. This year she decided to pursue a freelance career, and since doing this have worked/performed/toured with various companies including Ransack Dance Company, Keneish Dance, Ascension Dance and ADP events. Alongside performing, Angharad is also very passionate about teaching and choreography, and have worked closely with many different organisations including Elmhurst Ballet School, Grace & Poise Academy, Dance Collective and various Centres for Advanced Training.
Instagram: @angharadjonesyoungdance
Meriem Jouti
Meriem Jouti is a Moroccan-born, UK-based poet, writer, and cultural organiser whose work explores themes of identity, belonging, and resistance. A BBC Words Firstfinalist and Uni-Slam champion, her poetry bridges the personal and political, amplifying underrepresented narratives.
As the co-founder of Dyarr Collective, Meriem has created a platform for Arab and minority artists to thrive, while her open mic series, Muse, celebrates diverse creative voices. Her work has been featured on stages across the UK, with commissioned pieces for BBC 1Xtra and the Moroccan Embassy.
Instagram: @meriemtalks
Alexander Lea
Alexander Lea (b.2002) is a composer, clarinettist and music educator based in Derbyshire. He graduated with first-class honours in 2024 from the University of Oxford, where he read Music at New College, studying composition with Luke Lewis. Writing across both acoustic and electronic mediums, his music draws inspiration from a range of sources including transcriptions of archival recordings, contemporary literature, visual media and the exciting possibilities of digital technology. In his compositions, he is interested in bringing together material from diverse origins and seeking connections between them within new structures. While at Oxford, Alex’s music was read by the Engegård Quartet, student Ensemble ISIS, and the piano-tabla duo of Shabhaz Hussain and Helena-Anahita Wilson. He was a recipient of the Sir Thomas Beecham Trust Award in 2021 and was shortlisted for the Henfrey Prize 2024.
Instagram: @alexleamusic
Kristina Nenova
Kristina Nenova is a Bulgarian artist based in the UK. She takes an interdisciplinary approach to create work focusing on the act of passing down traditions, belongings, ideas and knowledge. Her interests stem from personal experience of migrating from Bulgaria to the UK, navigating a balance of new identities within an ever changing political and social context. Most recently, she has began utilising the act of pickling as a research method, and the act of filling out bureaucratic forms as a way of exploring the nuances of her migration.
Nenova works with sound, archival materials, textiles and moving image, often combining the mediums for the purpose of story telling. Kristina’s research is concerned in the way the act of passing down is transformed by migration and queerness, with a focus on traditional dancing, objects brought over from home, and oral histories.
Instagram: @nenova.art
Helen Li Newbold
Helen Li Newbold is a recent art graduate based in the East Midlands. Her current practice is concerned with topics of fragmentation, destruction, religion, and interpersonal relationships, usually taking the form of drawing or sculpture. She uses her work to personally navigate the ambiguity these themes raise: struggling through the discomfort of uncertainty until she can accept it as an inevitable part of her life, extending an invitation to others to also make peace with it. This struggle is visualised through abstraction and the appropriation of religious - usually Christian - iconography. By repositioning such imagery in a new context, the artist reflects on her role in meaning-making for things that are believed to be unmoving and inerrant, and in turn looks to the myriad ways in which they have been presented in the past. How do we decide which meaning is correct? Or is there a way to embrace the element of mystery?
Instagram: @somethingbyhelen
Felipe Pineda
Felipe Pineda (Viña del Mar, 1995) is a visual artist from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and currently a candidate for an MFA in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths University of London. He worked in the projects department at the Antenna Foundation in Chile and was a teaching assistant at the Faculty of Arts of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in courses of creation, public art, and contemporary art.
Interested in interpersonal relationships and intersubjectivity, he has developed his work in the field of relational art, creating installations, sound pieces, and collaborative works. Recently, since moving to the UK from Chile, he has been investigating the notion of language and communication in the context of migration.
He has participated in both group and solo exhibitions in various spaces in Chile, such as the Cultural Park of Valparaíso (2020), Gabriela Mistral Cultural Center GAM (2021), Macchina Gallery (2022), Balmaceda Arte Joven Gallery in Santiago (2022), Vilches Space (2023), Museum of Contemporary Art MAC (2023), Espora Gallery (2023), and Espacio 550 (2024), among others.
In 2023, he participated in the residency From Art to Watch to Art to Play at Nube Lab, and the Error project residency in Mexico City.
Instagram: @felipes.pinedas
Image by Tom Morley
Elaheh Raofi
Elaheh Raofi is a multidisciplinary artist whose work is deeply rooted in the rich cultural heritage of the Middle East, particularly drawing inspiration from Persian symbols and metaphors.
By day, she navigates the digital realm as a designer, harnessing her expertise in graphic design and illustration. As the sun sets, she transitions into her role as an artist, indulging in the tactile world of textiles, fabrics, and clay. Elaheh’s artistic practice is a journey of exploration, blending traditional techniques with contemporary sensibilities. Through her work, she seeks to transcend boundaries, inviting viewers to engage with themes of identity, cultural memory, and social commentary.
Her recent installation Pirouz pays homage to Pirouz and the courageous Iranian women tirelessly fighting for their rights. Elaheh continues to use her practice of blending across varied art forms to draw attention to crucial issues while blending modernity with a deep respect for the rich traditions that inspire her work.
Elaheh’s art serves as a powerful conduit for advocacy, stirring hearts, inspiring empathy, and igniting change. In honouring the stories of everyday heroes, she celebrates the resilience and diversity of the human experience, inviting viewers to join her in a journey of discovery and reflection.
Instagram: @elahehraofi.art
Image by Rob Gunn
Sky Su
Sky Su (he/they) dances, writes and relates, hailing from Lenapehoking, the unceded land of the Lenape people, from a Han Taiwanese family. They studied Sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art and began dancing in Edinburgh, nurtured by the local Scottish dance community, and now shares Contact Improvisation as a queer and antiracist practice. Sky has danced for Curious Seed, performing in "FIELD - Something for the Future Now", "Little by Little Field" and an Ireland/Theatre In Schools Scotland tour of "Chalk About". They have also performed at Fruitmarket Gallery, Hidden Door Festival, Something Smashing, Leith New Music, Deepness Dementia Arts Festival, Huddersfield, Portobello promenade and various woodlands. Their work is relational and improvised, often spontaneously organised and experimental, collaborating on projects with other dancers, movers, musicians, artists and filmmakers. Sky and collaborator Gunnar Bjercke recently shared their performance ritual "reverse inheritance", an invocation of their fathers through storytelling, candle lit shadow play, a dance-struggle in semidarkness and a masked conjuration. Sky is guided by the inspiration of close friendships and the lineages of social, racial, queer, environmental justice movements and Sufism.
Instagram: @sskyssuu
Ruby Waage Townsend
Ruby Waage Townsend (b.1996) is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Leicester, UK. Focusing on themes such as identity, trauma, and domestic environments, the artist seeks to both emulate the everyday and transpose settings in a dream-like way, examining facades and illusions. Brought up in the UK, from Dutch heritage, she intertwines folklore with lived experiences alongside familial stories, filtering reality through mythology, making the ephemeral tangible through the medium of paint.
Instagram: @rubywaagetownsendart
Image by David John King
John Whall
John Whall is a multi award winning Digital Participation Artist, Curator and Producer who uses digital tools and materials to creatively engage audiences with arts and contemporary culture. His work is a fusion of digital and participatory practice, through collaborative and co-creative processes, with a focus on creating together. This involves the developing of processes that translate complex digital practice into accessible creative activities, which inspire and empower audiences in the creation of immersive experience.
John’s work also includes exploring participatory practice through our conscious experiences of online and offline immersive creative spaces. Aligned with phenomenological philosophies and the basic intentional structure of consciousness. He is intrigued by how our first-person perspectives of collaborative physical and online spaces can allow us to explore our individual conscious experiences and their relationship to others.
Instagram: @whatsthemetajohn