artists

Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck (b.1990, France) is a painter, transdisciplinary artist and cultural practitioner based in rural Oxfordshire. Her practice, composed of painting, drawing, installation, sculpture, film, photography, writing, participatory projects, horticulture, publishing and workshops, renders caring, positive and ecological messages in soft and delicate methods. Interaction with the environment and others is central to much of the artist’s work. Recent solo exhibitions include Dreaming about Tomorrow at Nidi Gallery. Recent group exhibitions include Edge Effects at Whitechapel Gallery, One Foot in The Sky at Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer and New Nature at Paterson Zevi. Johanna founded the collaborative cultural deep-ecology-informed initiatives Poetic Pastel Press and The Gardening Drawing Club. She …

Emma’s delicate and sensitive drawings in charcoal, chalk and pencil convey the beauty of nature in an intimate way, reflecting her practice of working outdoors in all seasons, fully immersed in the landscape. Her field sketches create vivid personal portraits of individual trees, brimming with life.   Emma’s work centres around close observation and is informed by her background as a biologist. It is characterised by taking note – focusing on what is important or significant in the moment – and by an openness to the possibilities of a landscape. Rarely leaving home without a sketchbook, she is able to respond to the …

Jynsym Ong is a studio potter making high fired mostly functional ware. She has studied ceramics at Clay College in Stoke On Trent and was selected as a Daiwa Scholar enabling her to undertake an apprenticeship at Mitoh Kama in Karatsu, Japan. She is interested in patterns that are found in nature that have subtlety and variation. To achieve this she uses natural materials like ash, found clay and rocks. The pots are then fired for up to 70 hours in an Anagama (wood-fired cave kiln) which creates additional volatility in the kiln atmosphere creating unexpected surfaces from the fly ash and flame paths. With her work she is looking to enrich people’s lives in a little way every day, hoping to bring joy to the quotidian and an exaltation of the domestic.

I am constantly making new work and destroying it. Anything I make that has a story, or a cultural attachment or an emotion is discarded. The only work I seem to allow myself to remain are natural pigment dot and mosaic paintings. The composition must be geometric and the colour monochromatic. I also execute simple observational pencil drawings, which have no narrative or point of view. The work is not creative and not expressive. It is constructed. I am trying to make work that has always existed and will always exist. I want the paintings to be eternal and to …

Georgia is an emerging jewellery designer and maker living in Sheffield. After graduating from Sheffield Hallam University, she secured a place at Yorkshire Artspace – Persistence Works on their Jewellery and Metalwork Starter Studio Program, where she now shares a studio with 6 other talented makers. Time spent working side by side with goldsmiths and master chain makers in Bangalore inspires the motif of chain in her collections.

1972 :  Created toys with textiles (dolls, animals, giant cushions) and published the ideas in magazines 1982 :  Created figurative pictures in the textile medium. These were often exhibited in shows and well recognised by the public. 1987 :  Artistic expression became naturally more abstract with the diversity of different mediums, textures and salvaged materials. Participated in numerous contests;  frequently organised classes and courses to teach the artistic techniques. From 1982 : Numerous exhibitions in France and also in Switzerland (Avenches, Crans-Montana, Lausanne, Onnens), Germany (Oldenburg, Freiburg, Unna), Canada (Sherbrook), Japan (Tokyo, Kyoto), Hungary (Budapest), U.S. (Dallas, Pasadena, Atlanda, Denver), Belgium …

Claudia Rankin lives and works in Northumberland. Growing up in London, she spent many afternoons as a child exploring the textile and ceramic collections within the Victoria & Albert Museum. This led her to an enduring love of colour, motif, pattern and historical narratives; all of which are encapsulated within her work. Following a Foundation year at Wimbledon School of Art, Rankin studied Fine Art at Canterbury College of Art (1984-1987), before completing an MA in Sculpture at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (1987-1989). Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Claudia Rankin is a multi-disciplinary artist …

Mthobisi Maphumulo was born in the rural area of Imfume, South Africa. Having had a passion for art in his youth he gave up a scholarship to study medicine overseas and concentrated on his art. His work is a critique of modern society developed by industrialisation. He is interested in examining the deconstruction of family, community and environment through his works. He also investigates identity transformation and its parallels. He has, for many years, been covering his subjects’ faces with masks and safety equipment. The traditional African masks are transformed into a symbol of modern-day industrial victimisation. He is a master …