Friday 19 July, Victoria Hall, Glossop
Just why are so many artists interested in ancient stones and their significance? In this short introduction, Fionna will be looking at the ideas behind the Stones Project Glossop Weekender and some of the themes addressed by the artists involved. She’ll also be talking about how Scholars of the Stones came about and what we hope to do in future.
Fionna Barber is an art historian based in Glossop. She is a member of the Scholars of the Stones research group in the department of Art and Performance at Manchester School of Art. The Stones Project combines her longstanding interests in ancient and megalithic landscapes and the work of contemporary artists.
Glossop is known for its large number of carved stone heads, often referred to as Celtic Stone Heads; indeed, the North Derbyshire Archaeological Survey described Glossop as potential head “cult centre”. But what do we actually know about these stone heads? Do they represent a single phenomenon? Or are we looking at different periods, different types, and with multiple meanings?
Tim is a Glossop-based archaeologist, interested in landscape, folklore, mudlarking, and is a strong advocate for public engagement in heritage. He can often be found lecturing and blogging to that effect, and has produced a periodical - Where/Where: The Journal of Archaeological Wandering - to encourage people to explore our shared historic landscape. Research interests include: material culture, magical household protection, and personal ritual. Is perhaps a little more obsessed with pottery than is healthy.
The South Armagh/Louth border area, particularly around the Gap of the North, between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, is an area rich in ancient history, folklore and mythology. This talk examines how ancient stone monuments in this region act as both physical markers and symbolic thresholds, embodying liminality and connecting past and present.
This talk offers insights into how the monuments of South Armagh/ Louth border area and the Peak District of England serve as historical artifacts and timeless symbols. By exploring their cultural, mythological, and material significance. This talk illuminates the profound connection between these ancient structures and the landscapes they inhibit, inviting the audience to see them not just as remnants of the past, but as enduring elements of our collective heritage.
Ann Carragher is a visual artist and a PhD candidate at Manchester School of Art, where she is also an associate lecturer. Ann’s research explores the concept of liminality, in relation to borders, diaspora, and cultural identity. Her current research meditates on the ‘Gap of the North’, a border territory between Northern Ireland and Ireland. Ann presents works that weave together notions of loss and lament, by exploring the ambiguous and elusive qualities that manifest physically and psychologically in the intersection between space, place, mobility and memory.
Beccy Kennedy-Schtyk is an art historian and researcher at Manchester School of Art. She is developing her creative practice for The Stones Project as a form of affective research-praxis into ancient and modern standing stones and their sociohistorical and material representations within Late Modern Folk Horror televisual / filmic texts.
The Stones Project, co-founded by Fionna Barber, Beccy Kennedy-Schtyk, Martha Lineham and Hannah Singleton, all members of the Visual Culture Research group in the department of Art and Performance at MMU. Together, their research, writing and art practices probe and express the visuality and sensorial potentialities of ritual stone structures, both ancient and modern. In particular, they focus on issues of affect, materiality, mythology and temporality, using mixed methods, including in situ responses to stone.
Their previous event and exhibition at O! Peste Destroyed in Manchester in collaboration with DVRK Arts Research Kollective was themed around stone circles. For The Stones Project Weekender they wanted to open up and expand the exhibition and travel it to Glossop – the gateway to the Peak District, with its many Neolithic stone structures. They plan to organise a symposium in the coming year.
scholarsofthestones // #TheStonesProjectWeekender
The ‘Ancient Monument’ text in this print is taken from a photograph of a hand painted sign on the 16th Century Bradgate House in Bradgate Park, Leicestershire. The work interrogates ideas around the guardianship of ancient monuments. Somebody painted this sign. Who? The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act was passed in 1979. But who looked after ancient sites before then? Artist, essayist, and occultist Ithell Colquhoun writes about the old guardians of sacred sites in her book The Living Stones: Cornwall (1957), “Hence a sadness hangs over the spot…no one for centuries has been willing to take over a rustic ministry as it’s guardian. Here there is no one to keep the water clear of weeds, tend the stonework, direct pilgrims and receive their offerings as of old”. Adopt a stone. Point someone in the right direction. Bring an offering (some blackberries or biscuit crumbs will do) Consult the old maps and walk the tangled paths. We are the new guardians.
Caitlin Akers is a Preston based artist working with printmaking, publications and multidisciplinary projects to explore storytelling, history and poetry. Her work often involves workshops in hand made processes, such as bookbinding and printmaking, inviting participants to learn new skills together to foster community, agency and conversations through making. Akers holds a Masters in Visual Arts: Book Arts from Camberwell College of Arts UAL and has created commissioned art works for Od Arts Festival, Somerset, Twisting Heads (2023), B-Side Festival, Dorset, Portland Print Workshop (2020- 22) Kingsgate Project Space, London, One More Round (2019) and Manchester International Festival, MIF Memory (2018) She has artist books and prints in many public and private collections such as the Centre for Fine Print Research, Bristol, UK and Manchester Metropolitan’s Special Collection’s Library, Manchester UK. Recent group exhibitions and artist residencies include ABC Stampa for the Artist Book Cooperative at Miss Read Art Book Fair, Berlin, (2023), The Manchester Contemporary (2023) and Half the Pressure Twice the Speed, Edition Residencies x Can Serrat Artist Residency, El Bruc, Spain (2023). Akers is a lecturer in Illustration for the Art Foundation course at Manchester School of Art and is a studio holder at The Birley artist studios in Preston.
A set of cyanotypes tracking shadows formed by a pre-historic sanctuary formed of ancient boulders in Barrocal Parque, Castelo Branco, Portugal. The artist created these on a month-long residency to the city, where she was drawn to themes of home making, constructed privacy and sanctity. Temporary Sanctuary became a time of reflection for the artist, who found solace beneath the stones on an afternoon at the end of the residency, taking time to hide beneath and between the rocks, crawling over and through them to reach each different shadow. With limited recourses on the residency, Ellie looked to alternative methods of printing, focusing on the experimental and ephemeral qualities of cyanotypes and anthotypes, making the most of the sun in the Portuguese summertime.
Ellie Anderson investigates the folk history, customs and stories of the British Isles, through the lens of an outsider. She was born and raised in the suburbs of London; folklore and calendar customs were not a part of her day-to-day life and upbringing. She is not alone in this fascination, with research showing that more and more city dwellers are leaving urban areas to regain a connection with the land. Ellie considers how contemporary pilgrimage strengthens her understanding and relationship with the folklore and history embedded in the British rural landscape. Ellie’s practice comes with a process led approach, using multiple iterations to create final outcomes. The artist communicates these themes through her artwork, which is primarily print based. The expansive world of print fascinates her because of the way it combines traditional craftsmanship with artistry and has continued to thrive and evolve in a digital age.
Tim Brennan is an Anglo-Irish artist who has exhibited internationally since 1986. His practice is not limited to one mode of production, focusing up the social and spiritual context, the journey and place.
In a time of social polarisation I find myself drifting into the cosmos - zooming out to view the ancient lay-lines from afar - accessing the star maps for guidance - time hopping the universal gateways to the dawn of stone circle ceremonies - witnessing the burial sites of celestial entities from the heavens above. The Shining Ones is a series of oil paintings reimagining stone circles (in this case, Arbor Low) as Earth portraits of the fallen celestials - beheld by the Zodiacs.
John-Paul Brown graduated with a BA (Hons) Photography, Blackpool & Fylde College in 2004. His multidisciplinary practise involves documentary photography, drawing, painting and large-scale installation, and combines research with personal experience to create layered narratives of the social present day.
This small series of collages explores the relationship between place and temporality, using images from ancient stone monuments in Ireland and the Peak District as focal points. These stone monuments are not mere relics of the past but dynamic intersections of time, space and human experience. The series highlights the liminal nature of these sites, existing between realms of past and present, sacred and mundane. This in-between state prompts a deeper contemplation of how we perceive and interact with historical spaces. Temporality shapes our relationship with these ancient places, challenging viewers to consider their own connections to time and space.
Ann Carragher - born in Newry, Co. Down, Northern Ireland. Currently an associate lecturer and practice-based PhD candidate at Manchester School of Art. Ann is a member of Abingdon Studios, Blackpool, and a founding member of Proximity Collective.
Stone Circle Transmission immerses listeners in a complex soundscape that explores human-stone communication through the medium of a crystal radio. It uses field recordings and their manipulation as a way to create and articulate experiential spaces. This is to engage listeners through both affect and immersion. The artwork draws on Oliveros’ work in creating links with deep listening as a way to connect with ancient technology, and then recontextualises and renders this to transduce sounds from the earth. The methodology shaping this piece draws upon Kahn’s ideas of natural radio. The spatialisation mirrors the position of each stone in the circle inviting the audience into ritual space. Positioned at the entrance of the stone circle is a field recording from the Nine Ladies Stone Circle. Rather than using a crystal the stone generates the frequencies. The soundscape construction is inspired by what Thompson describes as the transgressive poetics of noise, through which we can celebrate the static produced from unwanted radio frequency, and use other collected frequencies to speculate on the voice of stone.
Maya Chowdhry is an interdisciplinary artist utilising interactive audio, sonic art and sensory modalities to invite audiences to respond to, and create their own journey, through her artworks. One foundation of her work is exploring biodata sonification; turning brainwaves into melodies, plant waves into soundwaves and liquifying stone via radiowaves – seeking to find a shared language between the human and the more-than-human.
Stone circles are dotted across India, and they stand in their own context. But to nineteenth century western viewers they were out of space and out of time- what did people bring to these sites and how did this influence their experience of them?
Canal Soup in a Stone Bowl, photograph
Juxtaposition of stone, water, and plant on a Bridgewater Canal spur in Castlefield. Stone here is a utilitarian material, put in place to keep the canal water contained. While this may seem like an unromantic and disenchanted use of stone, an aesthetic eye can re-enchant the scene, thinking about how stone acts with agency in an urban context as a repository for human and plant activity.
Dr Charlotte Coull is an independent historian exploring materiality, the cultural history of stone, and public engagement through a variety of projects.
steinrunnin (petrified) is a lyrical exploration of collective and cultural eruptions in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Westmann islands’ (Southern Iceland) volcanic outburst. The volcano erupted unexpectedly in the early morning of January 23rd 1973, leading to the immediate and safe evacuation of the local population of 5000 people. Using analogue film observations of the island and other contemporary sites of eruption within Iceland as a focal point,Steinrunninmaps the personal to broader connotations of cultural and ecological histories. Filmed in the summer of 2021, in the immediate aftermath of the first waves of the covid-19 pandemic, the work contrasts geographical deep time with the communal aftershocks, impacts and recovery from singular and unexpected events.
Chris Paul Daniels graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2010 and lives and works in Manchester. He co-founded Unravel, the longest hand painted film in Britain which led over a hundred public events across the UK including Tate Britain, BFI Southbank, Turner Contemporary and IKON Gallery and a residency at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Recent works include SAFE at HOME, One Square Mile for Quays Culture & University of Salford Art Collection (with Sam Meech), Northern Lights, a co-commission by ICA & The Grundy Art Gallery, The Book of Lies for the National Museum of Iceland, and Steinrunnin/Petrified commissioned by Curated Place and Einkofi Productions.
Anton Kaldal Águstsson (1983) is a Reykjavik-based composer, designer and author exploring the intersection of sight and sound—between design and composition. From 2009–12, Anton was part of a research team documenting the history of the letter Ð, which culminated in the book ‘ð biography’. In recent years, he has been working on personal and professional projects that meld vibrant abstractions and experimental typography. Synaesthesia informs much of Anton’s creative work, resulting in the convergence of colour, form and visual compositions in both his design and music outputs. With multiple releases under his belt, Anton operates the electronic outfit Tonik Ensemble, and regularly composes for light installations, performances and film.
The Lucky Pebbles project was created from a love of the landscape, collecting pebbles and gifting them to friends. It transpired from wanting to imitate the landscape through sculpture, using clay and glazes to mimic rocks, to wishing for a purpose to share art as a physical object that reaches beyond the gallery or studio setting. Clay uses all of the earth’s elements during the process of making which I believe is magical and therefore grants me the power to call these pebbles ‘lucky’ for anyone who will receive them this luck will give them the power of the earth’s magic for good luck and fortune forevermore.
Exploring the relationship between humans and nature, Abbie Fowler investigates the many ways we interact and interpret the landscape around us. Often working with the idea of receptacle she explores this relationship through photography and sculpture where she forms collections of objects as artwork as well as making sculptures derived from nature.
‘ANCIENT’ STONE CIRCLE MADE IN THE 90s BY A MAN CALLED DAVE is the first in a series of prints The Latest Headlines from the UK, reworking the bizarre headlines spotted amongst the doom and gloom the digital news cycle. Printed with the old-school authority of letterpress and rubber stamps, the text references a news story from 2019, when archaeologists in Scotland had their celebrations cut short after it emerged an ‘ancient’ stone circle was built by a local farmer less than 30 years ago.
George Gibson is an artist interested in archiving niche fanaticism in print; obsessed with obsessions. Working within printmaking and artists books, George’s previous work has explored cryptozoology, queer retellings of Godzilla, an investigation into the history of ‘Goblin Mode’, and an evaluation of the psychological impact of the hit 00s science fiction drama LOST.
The work explores an idealised landscape painted from memory of the rural landscape surrounding my hometown. By relocating the four stone’s, which were follies placed in Clent hills by Lord Lytellton in the 1750’s, I play with the idea of these objects (stones) wandering through the landscape changing their original perspective.
Born in Birmingham and currently living in Worcester, Graham explores the rural landscape capturing the sublime aspects of our daily encounters. He depicts the landscapes through large-scale charcoal drawings, painting and printmaking.
I have known this landscape for many years, but since moving to Glossop in 2022 I have found myself increasingly drawn to the brooding presence of Kinder Scout. No matter how often I’ve visited it, there’s no escaping its own particular sense of strangeness. However many thousands of people have visited it or made it their home from prehistory to our own troubled times, it has kept its essential ‘otherness’. The rock formations in particular suggest this ambivalence, they are at once so familiar and so alien. In a way they (and my photographs) are my own personal landmarks, and as much photographs of my own state of being, my own imaginative life, as they are visual records of the magic, mystery and wonder that I find in the ever-changing face of this extraordinary landscape.
Spencer studied photography in Nottingham and Helsinki. He uses his photographs as a way of keeping a visual journal - documenting the less obvious details of his surroundings which fascinate him. This can be people, landscape or architecture. Spencer’s work over recent years has been particularly drawn to rock and stone formations in the landscape with an interest in ancient sites. His work sets out to capture the unique mysterious atmosphere these special places transmit through his photography. Spencer moved to Glossop with his wife Cordelia in 2021 and has immersed himself in the surrounding landscape which feels like it has always been his home.
[If you are unable to read the A5 sized green-on-black writing in the zine, please see black text on cream version]
The Project of the Stones zine contains text and image collaged assemblages. It aims to (re)interpret relationships between humans and - natural, supernatural, analogue and digital, 2D and 3D – folklore materials (and materialities), focusing on stone structures. Beccy works with maximalist styles and folk horror imagery - haunted by her nostalgia of watching 1970s macabre television in the 1980s as a child.
Dr Beccy Kennedy-Schtyk is an art historian and researcher. She is developing her practice for The Stones Project as a form of affective research/praxis into ancient and modern ritual standing stones and their sociohistorical representations within Folk Horror televisual / filmic texts, working with analogue and digital mixed media - primarily producing forms of collage.
Having spent time researching and exploring Neolithic symbols and shapes, taking a trip to Northumberland to better understand and experience the markings and their settings. I have used these markings to decorate the outside of the wooden box. Carving the marks into the wood is reminiscent of the way that Prehistoric people would have had to carefully carve their marks into the rocks they chose. Using a speaker to create a low frequency sound, the noise reminds me of the feeling in my chest whilst I explored and visited the Neolithic markings in Northumberland. The rocks there are isolated and fully integrated into their natural settings. The world around them is still similar to how it was when the markings were created and I hope will be for many years to come.
Carys Kilduff is a multi-disciplinary artist who has been exploring increasing public awareness of Prehistoric art and striving to understand possible ways to protect Neolithic art for future generations.
This diptych seeks to underscore the already well understood tension between the forces of mother nature and the forces of man. The ambitions of royalty, the church, and the Industrial Revolution were built of stone. At the peak of the industrial revolution gritstone was giving passage to vast amounts of raw cotton and cloth. It redirected rivers to drive machines the size of church halls housed in vast gritstone buildings. If the Industrial Revolution was the engine room of the country then perhaps you could argue gritstone was the backbone of the British Empire. These images of hewn and naturally formed gritstone with their interlocking forms are presented as ersatz Victorian era photographs. Modern day exposures using vintage lenses to reveal deficiencies of that time. The stone still labours under our authority. The form changes again and again as the ambitions of man shift, and may well continue until all that remains is the dust.
Adrian Lambert was born in Glossop in 1972. He is an artist and a photographer and a father to two daughters. He lived in Australia for 16 years and holds dual citizenship. His artistic practice is concerned with the fundamental problems of what it is to be a human amongst other humans.
A series of large scale images of the Historic 9 standards.
Oliver Latimer’s Photographs document human traces within the landscape. Exploring complex issues and themes around place, memory and perception of the photographic image, the journey, experience, story, identity, culture and the environment are all entry points for the viewer into Latimer’s work.
Circling the stones: Beermat as artwork (2024) is a close-up photo with sound observation fieldnotes as a beermat print, from a modern stone circle in the artist’s local park (Cringle Park) experienced in the everyday through perfunctory park laps.
_Clay stills from stone circles _and site-writing labels: WIP (2024) is clay pressings from purposeful visits to Nine Ladies, Bamford Moor and Hordron Edge ancient stone circles as well as from the aforementioned Cringle Park modern stone circle, observing surface, texture, stillness and place. Accompanied by site-writing labels developed from fieldnotes.
Martha is an Artist-Ethnographer, Senior Lecturer at Manchester School of Art, co-founder of The Stones Project and co-curator of this exhibition. Martha’s research practice explores the sensory experience and affective atmospheres of sites. She is developing interests in rituals of walking and encounter in relation to modern and ancient stone circles.
Wood splintered during the storm that raged over Winter Solstice is contrasted with subtle indentations of an embrace in Warmth Beneath the Bark. Using found birch from Nine Maidens Stone Circle, the artist seeks to draw a connection between megalithic sites and the forests that surround them. The viewer is invited to embrace the piece and press their hands into the whittled indentations to connect to the presence within the grain.
Liz Llewelyn encourages their audience to slow down, listen to the trees and press themselves against the stones. They find solace and regulation in natural environments, so create work within and through them, bringing the outside in and the inside out. Their practice is sculptural, primarily based in woodwork and photography.
A walking journal and data visualisation experiment, diary entries for each stop along the way are broken down into text datasets and represented as a force-directed network graph. The work intends to represent the space of maps with words instead of roads.
Rose London works in web preservation and writes scripts by day, and creates magick, nature poetry, Doomerist chapbooks and traditional relief prints under the pseudonym Myrtle Cross by night.
“These islands are haunted by more than just ghosts. The old chalk figures and standing stones, fairy paths and spirit roads” A Gift of Unknown Things, The Low Drift
The Low Drift travel beyond the Keep Out signs to the ancient green lanes and sunken tracks, where our ancestors buried their bones. Their songs explore folklore, family, childhood and the memories that landscapes evoke. Jane Samuels cover art drawing forms part of her work Terrain: Anatomical Landscapes and was commissioned to accompany this album of songs. The imagery - standing stones, cooling towers, pylons, a hawk, a fox - are drawn directly from the lyrics of the songs. Several of the Low Drift songs were inspired by Derbyshire and Peak District walks, particularly Bleaklow, _Monyash and Everything Flows. The featured track A Gift of Unknown Things explores the woodland folk tales and haunted archaeology of the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire borders.
The Low Drift are an artist collective made up of singer-songwriters Emma Thorpe, Matt Hill and Huw Costin. They go on walks and then write songs about them. Jane Samuels is a UK walking and place artist with an interest in psychogeography & deep topography.
Using sculpture to create a bridge for Irishness in England.
Luke McAleenan, an Irish artist, delves into themes of grief through their art. Influenced by their upbringing in a rural Catholic community, McAleenan blends Christian iconography with the inadvertent beauty found in agricultural landscapes. Their large-scale sculptures and installations act as metaphorical bridges, linking the past with the present, while paying homage to the rich history of burial practices in Ireland.
Granular bed (synthesized spaces), 2024 is derived from a body of work that I have been developing. These being works that function as elements of a hauntological dreamscape. This artwork explores the disconnect between individual contemporary, post-modern beings and those of pre-Roman British history, through a deconstructed, objectified standing stone. Transforming a site of culture and ritual into an examinable specimen, a reconstructed neo-reality. The engagement with the synthetic is evidenced within the use of industrialized materials such as concrete, stainless steel, plastic and epoxy resin. The use of image within this work relays a Simulationist approach to representation, featuring no truth. This is materialised within both the inkjet printed photographs, CGI renders and video game-esque decal applied to the wood.
Tom Motley is a contemporary artist based in Manchester. Their self-described ‘multi-dimensional’ artistic practice branches experimentation into digital, site-specific installation, text and sculptural works with an expressionistic awareness of culture, history and philosophy, deeply focused on conceptions of reality.
Megalithic Code I is part of a series of hand cut collages which explore our relationship with the ancient stone structures left to us by our ancestors. Michael uses numerological ‘code’ within the piece to represent the geometric nature of ancient structures which commonly took the form of stone circles. The circle itself is symbolic of the seasons, life and death; Michael also employs symbolism to represent those themes within the piece.
Michael is a collage artist from Manchester who rediscovered the joy of collaging during the 2020 lockdown as a form of escapism. He has since had pieces displayed at Antwerp Mansion for West Art Collective, Afflecks Palace for Happening in Manchester and has been published in GULP magazine.
Inspired by a visit to Arbor Low stone circle and reconnection with family and friends. A chance to commune with the land and the sacredness of the stones. A chance to make a creative journey, made in response to the Tarot card, the 4 of Wands. The four wands are symbolical of community spirit, belonging, family bonds and reunion. The photos capture moments of contemplation and celebration of how the stones have reunited us in ancient and present time.
Rachel Shore is an arts engagement practitioner who has worked creatively with socially marginalised adults across the North West for over 14 years. In her own art practice she creates conceptual assemblage art with found natural materials. Her artwork is inspired by connection to nature and metaphor, pieces are often left as dedications to the elements and the earth. Rachel`s practice is closely aligned with eco-arts therapy and she is currently training to be become a qualified Eco Therapist.
This photograph depicts the interaction between weather and stone, comparing how stone constructs and deconstructs itself with time. Carmen encourages the viewer to access a deeper relation and sensibility to nature; how can we experience its rich memory?
Carmen is a photographic artist based in Manchester, currently pursuing a BA in Photography. Her works are often the outcome of an intricate process that has experimented with analogue methods and explored philosophical ideas.
Ha _ha _ha _ha _ha (2024) is an anaglyph analogue collage made by cutting and pasting images of stones, rocks, and gems from selected second-hand books. An analogue collagist brings images together from multiple sources, which allows the final piece to transcend time. The choices, meanings, and decisions behind each element’s placement, made by the collagist may not be completely apparent to the viewer; who simultaneously brings their own context to the collage’s individual elements and the collage as a whole. The individual paper elements, like stones, contain traces of previous times, and the collage, like stone circles, involves communal human effort and meaning making. The title of the piece refers to a scene in the 2022 film, Everything Everywhere All at Once where two human characters take the form of two rocks in an alternative universe where life has not formed. The hybrid human-stones contemplate human existence and laugh at the futility of life together.
Alice Thickett is a collagist and PhD researcher at the Manchester School of Art. Alice’s work is usually inspired by the biological sciences, hybridity, and storytelling. She sees the characters in her collages as existing in alternative universes together, and is interested in how collage’s multiple edges can create coherence as well as disruptions. In 2023 Alice was shortlisted for the ‘innovation award’ for Contemporary Collage Magazine, and presented her collage research at the British Science Festival after winning the award for Art and Science. Last year, her research paper was published in the Springer publication, ‘Approaches for Science Illustration and Communication.’ (2023).
Dore Holm reflects on how identity can be shaped by landscape, heritage and folklore. Roots run deep, and the landscapes of one’s home can often break through. Dore Holm takes ritual as performance; performance as ritual and became an immersive process of self realisation.
Originally from the Shetland Islands, Liúsaidh is an emerging interdisciplinary visual artist who focusses on themes of identity, landscape, and folklore. In 2022 Liúsaidh’s project Dore Holm was awarded the Castlefield Gallery Award, the RedEye Photography Network Award, and the Creative Industries Trafford Development Award in Photography in which she was selected to exhibit in a solo show at Waterside Arts Gallery. Liúsaidh was a recipient of the a-n 22–23 Artist Bursaries and will also be exhibiting at the Warrington Open Exhibition this year.
For the last few years I have been making field recordings at stone circles, dolmens, barrows, menhirs, cup and ring stones, and quoits. This work, composed only of sounds from these recordings, seeks to chart the emotional and affective resonances of these visits and the stones’ brute materiality.
Julian (or Bon) Holloway is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at MMU. His research focuses on sonic geographies of spectrality, haunting and the occult. He plays in the hauntronica trio Flange Circus and produces sound art under the moniker, Hol Weg.
A cacaphony of tales coming out of the ground told from the perspective of a coal mine that can be seen from the moon. A work created in close contact with the mine and all the entities that haunt it. The mine as a place where the identity, consciousness, spirituality of modern man is formed. Inspired by Adam Bobbett’s essay S_pirituality of coal_. He writes that “for most of us, fossil fuel driven industrialisation created the world we inhabit.” It makes sense, then, that these same fossil fuels have embedded themselves in our deepest recesses. They may even occupy the most unexpected regions. As energy transition ideas emerge and people in many parts of the world look for ways to escape the carbon culture, a small contribution to this effort may be to help trace how deep fossil fuels have reached.
Ewelina Węgiel is a multimedia artist. She is interested in quasi-documentary work that puts her in contact with different communities. Together with them, she looks at contemporary intuitions, symptoms, premonitions, unasystematisedknowledge in the context of post-End of the World reality. She is interested in pre-Christian cultures and animistic beliefs in Eastern Europe. In addition to the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, she studied at the Zurich University of the ArtsZHdK, the UdK University in Berlin, and the LUCA School of Arts in Brussels.
Film exploring queer landscapes, queer phenomenology and desire lines. In dialogue with Dereck Jarman’s Journey to Avebury (1971).
Filmmaker & Archivist, Siân A. Williams (they/them) is currently developing their creative practice through NWCDTP funded PhD Filmmaking research at Manchester Metropolitan University’s SODA (School of Digital Arts). Their work examines documentary and critical archive methodologies to address an absence of rural and gender-nonconforming queer narratives within AV heritage. They are working with collections from North-West Film Archive in experimental approaches to remix, reorientate and re-enact queer space within the archive. Siân co-redirected the Scottish BAFTA nominated and Iris Prize winning feature documentary Rebel Dykes (2021) and is working at Queer Britain as their freelance project manager on a Museums Association supported national oral history and podcast project.
A collection of paper embossing, responding to a month-long artist residency in Castelo Branco, Portugal. The work is inspired by the Prehistoric Barrocal Granite at the Barrocal Parque. Paper and water have been used to emboss the intricate textures of the ancient stone both on location and in a studio setting. Naturally dyed using spirulina, the paper’s mossy hue depicts the granite’s natural tones and texture. The collection aims to replicate the fascinating surfaces of many diverse granite geoforms including a Prehistoric Sanctuary that shows the existence of ancient man.
Anna is an interdisciplinary textile artist, who combines traditional techniques with modern technology to create unique innovative sculptural works. She has a passion for hands-on practical techniques and has a keen interest in pushing the boundaries of textile and paper art. Movement is a fundamental theme throughout her practice and she draws inspiration from the shapes and forms found in nature and the human body. She aims to create work that captures movement and increases our connection with the natural world. Anna’s practice focuses on producing artwork that promotes tranquillity in public spaces, she strives to create work that insights moments of mindfulness and fits within Biophilic design.