Meet the Artists

‘Practice and Research in Action’

25th-30th June 2018, Sidney Nolan Trust, Powys.
Funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council, North West Consortium
Doctoral Training Partnership and PAHC, MMU.
On the strength of our successful artists’ camp residency in 2017, this evening is a
celebration of new work in progress that has taken place during a five-night residency
for 13 practice-based PhD researchers.

This Artists’ Camp has been organised by a group of researchers from Manchester
School of Art but could not achieved this without the support of our generous hosts here
at the Sidney Nolan Trust. Many of us came on a Sidney Nolan camp for the first time in
2017 but this year we are a larger group, from a total of eight different Universities
across the UK. The artist-researchers have been here for five days and we have been
developing our own practices, skill sharing and collaborations. We also set ourselves a
remit of responding to Sidney Nolan’s work and his extraordinary landscape at The Rodd.

What you see tonight is therefore a window on our worlds, a chance to see artistic and
innovative research processes at work. This is not a traditional arts exhibition. Our focus
has been on making and methodologies, leaps into the unknown and having the courage
to experiment. This week we have explored the unfamiliar. For example, some of us have
learnt printmaking for the first time, or combined music composition, visual art and film.
Our discussions have explored the spaces that exist in between our practices and
working methods. PhD researchers often work in isolation, so this was a chance to come
together and learn from one another.

The camp was not set up by Universities but by the practitioners themselves. It has been
self-managed and self-run, and this is the first time we have come together as a group.
All the work-in-progress on show has been produced this week, centering around the
advantages and challenges of combining practice and research. It aims to opening-up
debates around the impact of this research beyond the academy. This really is Nolan’s
‘Paradise Garden’, a vibrant place of earthly delights that has inspired our practices.

PAHC Heartfelt thanks to the Sidney Nolan Trust.

Postgraduate Arts & Humanities Centre, MMU
Laurie Reynolds Performances
Laurie Reynolds' research interrogates our In the Barn Space
engagement to landscape as an arena of slippages of
space that surrounds the determinate of function and
idealised of our critical understanding of landscape,
6.45
inducing a metaphysical sempiternity, poetic,
indeterminacy. Through collaboration with Introduction by Andrew Bracey
indeterminacy within post-industrial landscapes with
the employment of the camera to act as device to allow Poem Recital by Anne Caldwell
me to traverse the assemblage created by movement of
elements that construct landscape, as well as being
able to capture light fallen on the subject of a 7.15
documentary. Photography is used as the entry point
for exploration, however with the intervention of the Painting and Improvisation
landscape throughout various stages of the Isabel Benito Gutierrez, Lesley Halliwell, Andrew Bracey
photographic process and sometimes creating the
and James Vandeventer, with percussion.
camera using elements and materials that reside
within the landscape to create collaborative pieces of
work that compose and build allowing land to create its
own mark on the images. 7.40
Performance by Jackie Haynes

8.00
Film Screening with Pavel Prokopic and music by Isabel
Benito Gutierrez
Nigel Allmark
I’m a PhD student in community psychology and
working wit the Manchester Homelessness
Partnership. This week, I’ll be trying to make sense of a
few concepts and chapters that I’m working on and
finding an artistic way of presenting them. It’s really
important that the ideas and reflections I’m pulling
together ‘ring true’ and make sense to the people and
groups that I’m working with; so this approach is
intended to spark more conversations and debate back
home. One idea is to create a ‘zine (like a comic
strip/magazine) and the topic up for debate is ‘how do
we define homelessness?’ There can be a broad
definition, a narrow one or somewhere in between.
What ever definition you choose to use has different
implications in both the assumptions you make about
what drives is and what we do to alleviate it. My choice
is – broad, multiple and thinking that maybe the ‘H’ word
ends up being use by some as a distraction from a
deeper issue going on – social inequality and that we
would be better off reducing the inequality gap at a
societal level than focussing on the different visible
effects of inequality.... I also realise that I could be a bit
clearer in what I’m saying!
Lin Charlston
Lin Charlston is in the final year of a practice-based
PhD at Manchester School of Art, developing a
sympoietic art practice with plants in which she takes
up the challenge of working with plants as partners
rather than using them to make art. To encourage
reciprocity and ethical attentiveness towards plants in
the light of humanity’s devastating global impacts, Lin
slows down the production of artefacts by walking with
plants, growing plants and sharing experiences such as
planting and weaving. She asks: how can plants figure
in art without exploitative and destructive moves? How
can plants be accepted as partners in creativity?
After gaining MA Book Arts with distinction at
Camberwell College of Arts (2000), Lin developed a
multidisciplinary approach to book-art informed by her
background in science education, with a generous
licence to extend the form. Plant/people relationships
have been an ongoing theme in her artist’s books, which
are held internationally in 40 public collections.
Sara Davies
Sara Davies invites the reader to contemplate what it
feels like to dwell, belong and reside in the shifting
political climate in post Brexit times. She is
complicating the notion of being Anglo-Swedish
showing how to inhabit a space between languages and
histories. Merging from the gaps and overlaps in
translation her work is formed by diasporic touch, a
kind of nostalgic handling driven by longing and loss.
The work is revealing how the ideas of homogenised
national identity veils a web of interwoven cultural
exchanges. Through articulating the particular Sara
Davies is creating a sense of the uncertainty in which
we all live.
Gemma Meek
On my first visit to The Rodd I became fascinated by a
'Veritas' logo, stuck to one of the storage containers in
the barn. Drawn to the well that the nude woman
perched upon in the logo, I spent much of my time trying
to find the farm’s well in an overgrown field.
Unfortunately, I never discovered it. So for this
residency, I hope to continue my explorations. This time,
my focus will be on the lore, ritual and mythology
surrounding wells. I hope to link this to my recent
research into Wicca rituals (blog post on
practiceandresearchinactionresidency.harts.online),
which often require a pool of water to 'draw down' the
moon. Interested in these rituals’ entanglement of
human action, other agents and place, I hope to explore
some of these spells, as a way of teasing out ideas
about wells and Lunar cycles - to see what might
emerge!
Andrew Bracey Jackie Haynes

Andrew Bracey is an artist, curator and lecturer. His This work is research for an art practice-based PhD
PhD research, ‘Towards Symbiosis: An investigation into which aims to question and reveal new approaches to
the parasite as metaphor for painting practice’ is learning, looking at and carrying out emplaced material
exploring an expanded notion of appropriation. He is thinking, through the peripatetic art practice of German
interested in the use of existing paintings by other artist, Kurt Schwitters.
artists in the work of contemporary practices as having
a mutually beneficial level of influence for both the
original artist and the contemporary artist. His solo
exhibitions include: Usher Gallery, 2014, Nottingham
Castle, 2014; Manchester Art Gallery 2009; Transition
Gallery, London, 2007; Wolverhampton Art Gallery,
2007; and firstsite, Colchester, 2006. Conferences
include Textile and Place, Manchester Metropolitan
University, 2018; The Archive Unbound, Cardiff
University, 2017; Paradox Fine Art European Forum’s
Biennial Conference, University of Arts London, 2017;
Please Specify!: International Conference on Artistic
Research, Theatre Academy, Helsinki, 2017. Bracey is
Programme Leader of MA Fine Art and PhD candidate at
The University of Lincoln, England.
Anne Caldwell
Anne Caldwell is a writer, researcher and poet. Her
poetry has been published in a range of anthologies – in
the UK and Australia. She has been long-listed for the
National Poetry Competition and short-listed for the
first Rialto Pamphlet competition in 2017. Anne is a
lecturer in creative writing at the Open University and is
currently undertaking a practice based PhD at the
University of Bolton exploring place, identity and the
idea of the North. Her latest book of poetry is ‘Painting
the Spiral Staircase’. (Cinnamon, Spring 2016), and her
next collection will be in hybrid form of prose poetry.
She has worked as Literature Programme Manager in
the North of England for the British Council. She is
fascinated by the idea of collaboration, and has worked
with photographers, animators, visual artists and
performance based artists. Anne has just been awarded
funding through the Arts Council this year to edit and
produce a new anthology of British prose poetry, with
co-editor Professor Oz Hardwick and Valley Press. She
is looking forward to exploring connections with other
practitioners on the residency, and making new work.
James Vandeventer
James Scott Vandeventer is pursuing a PhD at
Manchester Metropolitan University. His research is
situated at the boundary of geography and organisation
studies and seeks to understand alternative spatial
organising and how this can lead to more sustainable
living. Utilising both ethnographic and visual methods,
he seeks to understand the social-and-material,
relational process of spatial organising. During this
residency, James will explore a photo-elicitation
technique, inviting participants to take photographs
that capture what is meaningful about Rodd Farm and to
engage in subsequent interviews about the photos. He
intends to apply this technique in his research, which
focuses on a social housing estate in Hulme,
Manchester. Importantly, while James’ research
focuses on an urban context, future directions may
include investigations in rural settings such as Rodd
Farm. As such, this residency enables him to consider
application for his research beyond its current remit.
Pavel Prokopic
Pavel Prokopic is a filmmaker in the final stages of a
practice-research PhD project in film, which focuses on
creating certain magic moments of cinema by
combining aspects of style, unrepeatable nuances of
performance, and element of chance. This leads to the
creation of a series of short films, entitled Affective
Signs, and during the Sidney Nolan Trust residency,
Pavel wants to work on the final of this series of films,
which will be assembled out of 8mm found footage. He
will edit and experiment with the film material, and
work on music and sound design, which will accompany
the projection as live performance during the
exhibition. Pavel is currently on a six-month AHRC-
funded residency at the arts centre FACT in Liverpool,
and also works as a visiting lecturer in film at the
University of Westminster. To find out more please visit
pavelprokopic.com
Lesley Halliwell
Lesley’s research is about the depth of surface and it is
through her practice based enquiry that she aims to
more fully understand the interplay between the
outward-facing and the inward supporting components
of the picture plane. Inspired by pattern making from a
range of cultural traditions and techniques, from
Southern Indian kolams, Islamic geometry, Celtic
design, manuscript illumination and even the 1970s
children’s toy, the Spirograph, Halliwell finds
underlying similarities. Her work often returns to the
simple and universal constructions based on the circle
and the square but with fine line and delicate nuance of
surface. She has exhibited her work widely across the
UK and beyond including New Contemporaries, The
Jerwood Drawing Prize, Superabundant at Turner
Contemporary, Margate, Pattern Recognition at
Leicester City Art Gallery, The Drawing Show,
Castlefield Gallery, Manchester and Beauty is the First
Test at Pumphouse Gallery, London.
Isabel Benito Gutierrez
I am a Spanish composer and pianist based in England.
The main focus of my research is the use of music as an
interdisciplinary art form collaborating with
professionals from different artistic disciplines
particularly painters. Also, I am composing pieces
where the pictorial process is included in the concert
performances. During the residency, I would like to
create some improvisations and graphic scores to be
performed in collaboration with the other art
practitioners. I believe it would be really interesting to
experiment how people from other artistic disciplines
perceive and reinterpret the connection between music
patterns, dynamics, musical textures, the idea of pitch
and timbre, and their own creative work. I would also
like to give musical interpretation to some of the work
created by the rest of participants.
Jamie Jenkinson
Jamie Jenkinson is a video artist, writer, programmer
and lecturer specialising in popular video devices such
as smartphones. He is a current PhD candidate at LICA,
Lancaster; lecturer at the Royal College of Art, London;
and has exhibited internationally including National
Portrait Gallery, London; CCA, Glasgow; and NCCA, St
Petersburg. Jenkinson’s practice focuses on the
accessibility of video in the smartphone age,
incorporating Materialist methodologies established in
non-illusionist filmmaking to the digital nature of video
and usability of automated devices. Last year Jenkinson
made a series of videos focusing on the various animals
at the Sidney Nolan Trust, such as: Bulls,
Cockadoodledoo and Effy, which can be found in his
online video archive. This year he is looking to continue
this series while taking inspiration from Nolan’s iconic
foregrounding techniques. Instagram
@jamie_jenkinson_ Website
www.jamiejohnjamesjenkinson.com