Artist search

Katie Orton is an artist interested in the concept of the microcosm. What can a seemingly insignificant product or action tell us about societal forces and methods of control? What is it that makes us who we are? That is the question at the heart of Orton's work. She seems to have a fascination with the props of identity; a ring on a finger,...
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David Sherry (b. 1974, Northern Ireland) studied at the University of Ulster at Belfast (1994-1997) and Glasgow School of Art (MFA, 1998-2000). Solo exhibitions include Catalyst Arts, Belfast (2006), M and M Gallery, Antwerp (2005) and Jack Hanley, San Francisco (2005). Select group exhibitions include G.A.K. Bremen (2010), The Ikon Gallery...
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Sculptural practice and thought allows a very real exploration of the physical world. All its aspects fascinate me. My work is fuelled by diverse sources and open patterns of thought. Current work explores extremes of visibility, experience, material nature, location and situation. Time’s relationship with matter is a recurrent interest...
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My pictures derive from a delight in the world around. A play on the mundane and everyday reality we slip through on our way to somewhere else. They are about collective moments, some tragic, some euphoric, when the sharing of an experience gives significance to something unnoticed. These quiet revelations bind, nurture and reassure us in a world...
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Lisa O'Brien's performance and installation work stems from her interest in sound. In the 80's she studied Expressive Arts at Brighton Polytechnic which included components in music composition, performance and sculpture. She developed an interest in working with instruments and vocals and much of her subsequent composition and performance...
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Rabab Ghazoul is a visual artist whose practice draws upon a range of media to explore our negotiations and constructions of the political. Part social observation, part investigation into the realm of public narrative, her work often sees her referencing or re-staging chosen ‘texts’ – from news media footage to an existing art...
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My practice is a pictorialist one, involving mainly photography, painting and drawing, underpinned by the legacies and practices of conceptualism. In this way, I aim to work in and around issues of picturing, photography and realism as a set of problematics. Commentators have remarked upon my works' Romanticism but also its schizophrenic...
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Antony Hall creates discrete objects that attempt to defy entropy, harnessing elements of potential or kinetic energy and self-perpetuation. His work explores mechanical or fluid motion as well as biological phenomenon such as the behavior of animals. These works are often miniscule or apparently simple; yet invite closer observation...
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Using objects appropriated from cartoons as a starting point, Vincent James makes artwork across a range of media including painting, sculpture and animation. In this work props dislocated from different cartoon worlds collide, creating surreal and whimsical interactions. James’ sampling of popular culture and separation of objects from...
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Blue has been given access to the National Library of Wales' (NLW) varied collections which consist of many of the Nation's treasures, including a broad range of materials such as manuscripts, maps, photographs, paintings and archives - not to mention the films, sound tapes and off-air recordings that are also housed there. The project was...
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My work reflects my personal experience of architecture and urban design. I spend a lot of time looking at and photographing details of buildings and architectural landscaping, to use as source material. In my current work I am interested in how art is often integrated into urban design at all levels, from public art commissions to architectural...
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Allan Hughes is an artist based in Belfast and working out of Orchid Studios. His video work explores relationships and responses to the recorded voice and its role in the negotiation and remediation of historical narratives. Hughes’ works usually proceeds from research into the sites, documents and apparatus of recorded and remediated...
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'At the centre of Sarah Staton’s work is a dialogue between design, architecture, modernism, interior, exterior; the space between the work and the ground or support structures that exhibit the objects, and a little bit of life and fun without any cause for concern or angst-ridden guilt.' (Stephen Snoddy, 2012)Sarah Staton studied at...
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Anne-Mie Melis work explores the visual nature of plants and their role in an increasingly technology-infiltrated world. Her main inspiration is science, focused towards plant biology and engineering. She uses a variety of media; large-scale architectural botanical drawings on paper, assembled objects, composed from plant parts or pruned shrubs,...
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I met with Lucienne Cole on the 2nd May 2007 in a dark studio room in the heart of Birmingham, her current home. Lucienne and I shared a number of interests, the power of pop, the relationship between pop music and art, off-site interventions and art in social spaces. We had a lot to share, here are the highlights...This interview is available...
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In 'Bird Gesture' (2008) a woman stands in the centre of a busy shopping precinct. Around her are the signs of urban conformity and consumerism. The sun casts a shadow from one of the nearby trees, one of only a few in this non-place, which could be just about anywhere in the UK. In her cupped hands she holds a tiny bird. The bird is...
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When viewing Lloyd Durling's intricate art works I think about whether life is the result of things simply happening, or where simple things happen. By this I mean the way the world is a complex relationship between relatively simple actions that by a chain of associations develop into incredibly complex organisms and systems of existence. ...
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I am interested in how humans create an absurd mixture of conflicting emotions when they are faced with overwhelming situations and anxiety.Through videos and bodies of drawings, I use humour and narrative to examine the psychology behind disturbing human behaviours. My videos mimic television genres such as documentaries, reality shows and...
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At first glance, Will Woon’s practice may seem rooted rather soberly in the traditional, in its references to classical sculpture and notable historical figures. While this is true, it doesn’t take long for an inquisitive viewer to spot another level of meaning where his idiosyncrasies and obscure nuttiness are at play. His...
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Miranda Whall's work is simultaneously intimate while resonant of the collective vagaries of human experience and our inability to truly empathise with each other and with the natural and physical world around us. Whilst the content of her drawings and videos often appears sexually provocative or deeply confessional, she does this not for shock...
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Open Frequency ProfileCurator Sarah Shalgosky profiles the work of London-based artist Ben Long for Open Frequency.In what is widely heralded as a new age of austerity, strategies to develop a practice independent from market forces are relevant to many young artists. Ben Long makes ambitious, large-scale work with limited resources. His work...
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My work is usually large in scale, often installation based or temporary, though the physical action applied to it's construction is generally of a domestic ‘hand-held' dimension, and always excruciatingly repetitive. Current work reflects a long-term interest in ‘The Role of Repetition Within the Process of Art Production' (the working title of...
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My work involves creating installations, objects and drawings that respond to particular sites, collections and historic contexts. Underpinning the work is a desire to look beyond the surface of objects and buildings, to uncover forgotten and invisible histories of places and people, as a way of reframing and considering the past. Often drawing on...
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 Open Frequency ProfileDr Dominic Paterson profiles the multi-media practice of Glasgow-based artist Corin Sworn.The artist will be showing in Art Now at Tate Britain from 27 June - 25 September 2011.Corin Sworn’s work uses precise, carefully deployed means to address subject matter which is often indeterminate, ambiguous...
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Shama Khanna, an independent curator, profiles London-based artist Kit Craig for Open Frequency.Open Frequency ProfileAlthough Kit Craig’s artworks assume the form of visual signs, rather than pure translations of a thought or idea, they are involved in an imperfect process of attempting communication. At this penultimate stage before...
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My earlier works were composed of dense masses of parallel lines, drawn across a flat surface with a ruler - they were purely abstract. After some years I realised I wanted to work from reality. Now, all my source images are photographed from the natural world and then projected. Trees, plants and scrubland provide endless subject matter, although...
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  Olivia PlenderThe Masterpiece - Part One, Strange Adventures, 2003 Julie Brixey-Williams, Lilah Fowler, Maria Kontis, Kate Davis, Sue Williams, Olivia PlenderCurated by Anna LovattProvisional, quotidian, humble and unassuming, the practice of drawing was often overlooked by critics and curators during the modernist period. But...
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Artist and writer Gordon Dalton gives us an insight into the work of Alistair Owen, a recent graduate of Cardiff School of Art and Design. You walk into an empty room: four walls, one window and the door you just came in through. There is no furniture, or anything at all to speak of. If you haven’t walked straight back out, you...
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‘ I stood there in the dark with my father, in silence, and we knew that we were both sad, that we could not speak of it and that we both drew something from the dark.’ Lavinia greenlaw ‘The Importance Of Music To Girls’. The drawings I make of places, objects and people attempt to reinhabit and somehow explain emotional states or a feeling....
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Suzanne Mooney: Artist of the monthEach month a guest selector chooses an artist from the Axis directory to be featured as our artist of the month. This month writer and critic David Trigg discusses his selection.Central to the work of Suzanne Mooney is a fascination with the cultural significance of photography and its impact on how we perceive...
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Mick Peter: Artist of the monthEach month a guest selector chooses an artist from the Axis directory to be featured as our artist of the month. This month Laura Simpson, Assistant Curator for Exhibitions - Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, discusses her selection.Mick Peter works in sculpture, drawing and text. The...
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The Lonely Piper was genesised in 1999 as the sole protagonist in the film 'I Can't Play The Bagpipes', a romantic yet humorous deconstruction of Scottish stereotype. His body of work to date has a Caledonian twist yet stems from the universal concerns of natural history, life, death, the paranormal and a love of folklore. Modestly referring to...
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