Meet the Artists: The MashUP x UKNA 'Artists in the Now' exhibition
UK New Artists (UKNA) has partnered with The MashUP to provide Lincoln/shire based artists with an opportunity to share and exhibit work at the UKNA ‘Weekend Celebration of Creativity’ event taking place in Lincoln.
The Autumn brings to close a year long UKNA ‘Taking Place’ programme of artist residencies, workshops, commissions and showcases 17 artists from across Lincoln City and UK. Together The MashUP x UK New Artists want to continue to celebrate the wonderful contemporary visual arts being made in Lincoln/shire. Therefore, from an open call, we selected 10 new and emerging Lincoln/shire based visual artists to join us at the unique event and showcase their their work as part of the ‘Artists in the Now’ exhibition, curated by Jazz Swali. This exhibition celebrates the rich diversity of artistic voices in the region and reflects the breadth and wealth of both the artistic talent and the cultural identity of the city in 2023.
The exhibition will be open to the public during UKNA’s Weekend Celebration of Creativity’ from 19 - 22 October 2023.
Exhibition Location: The Link Up, St Marks Square, Lincoln, LN5 7EX
Friday 20 October Exclusive Preview at 16.30 - 17.30
Saturday 21 October 10.00 - 17.30 with a drop-in walk and talk tour at 16.00 with the curator, Jazz Swali
Sunday 22 October: 10.00 - 16.00
Meet the artists
Anzenna Warren / Anzenna Artz
An·ze·nna [an-zee-nah]
Noun, she / her
1. A freelance digital artist (see also “poor”, “starving” and “foolhardy”) that draws to live and lives to draw.
2. A hairy, humanoid creature of legend, reputed to inhabit wilderness areas of Lincoln, Lincolnshire.
Originally from East Dulwich in South London, Anzenna and her family set their roots in rural Lincoln, Lincolnshire in 2011.
In 2014, Anzenna completed the Prince’s Trust Exploring Enterprise programme and was rewarded a start-up grant to officially launch Anzenna Artz as a self-employed venture.
Although primarily a digital artist, Anzenna has been known to dabble in traditional work using ballpoint pens and alcohol markers. Her regular tools of the trade include the XP-PEN Deco 01 V2 drawing tablet, Adobe Photoshop and her own twisted mind. She cites her inspirations as Jamie Hewlett, Aubrey Beardsley, Egon Schiele, Banksy, Roy Lichtenstein, Chris Riddell, Don Bluth, Ralph Bakshi and early 1900s cartoons.
Prints, stickers, badges and more are available in her Etsy shop. Open to commission enquiries.
Gavin Brown
Classical methods of art production, sculpture and painting, serve as long-established visual languages. Fine Art Master's student at the University of Lincoln Gavin Brown takes advantage of these established dialects with contemporary creative thinking, in conjunction with digital modernity and emerging technologies. He considers how artificial intelligence (machine learning and perception) is providing creative entities with novel ways to learn, innovate and communicate.
How does a machine perceive and process the world? The expanding field of AI rapidly processes immense quantities of data, advancing fields of research and creativity at never-before-witnessed speeds. Gavin questions whether this new form of existence is for good, or ill; should it be nurtured, approached with caution, or abandoned altogether?
Fiona Carruthers
Fiona Carruthers completed an MA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in 2022 with a distinction. She was awarded a University of the Arts Final Project Award and CSM’s Tension Gallery Art Prize.
Carruthers’ work draws on experiences of living in Lincolnshire where with large areas of land at and below sea level, the threat of climate change is personal, immediate and ever-present. Physical disability and post-traumatic growth, outcomes of surviving local flooding, also lie at the heart of her creative decision-making. ‘From this position, it is easy to see that adapting to survive drives all life forms: human and non-human.’
Often playing with ideas of material significance, uncertainty and transformation, Carruthers’ work embodies an aesthetic that speaks of today’s uncertain political and ecological moment. It requires the viewer to slow down and invites us to think about what it means to be human in relation to the future of humanity, nature and technology.
Hannah Cawthorne
Hannah is a Lincoln based painter who works in an Abstract Expressionist style. She works in an intuitive, ever evolving way that seeks to explore the potential of abstract art to express our inner lives, and the experience of the world around us as filtered by human consciousness. She studied Fine Art and English Literature at university, and is very influenced by the stream of consciousness writings of Virginia Woolf as well as a host of Science Fiction authors. Before living in Lincoln she was based for a few years in Manchester, and was involved with the art academy at Salford’s artist-led creative hub, Islington Mill. This was a seminal experience for her, and led directly to her becoming the co-founder of a network for artists in Lincolnshire - “Creative Lincs”, as a means to collaborative mentoring of and support for artists at any stage of their career across this county.
Emily Collyer
Emily Collyer, also known as @hairypitsntits on Instagram, is an illustrator and artist dedicated to uplifting the voices of queer women and femmes within her art. Through the use of bright colours and themes of sex, body positivity and sexual empowerment, Emily’s art challenges the societal norms that are placed on us under a patriarchal society. Emily is also the co-founder of Obscene Pomegranate, a grass-roots queer magazine dedicated to uplifting the voices of queer creatives. She set up the launch party of the first issue which took place in Project Space Plus where she exhibited some of her most vibrant pieces as well as curated the exhibition alongside many other artists. Emily has also exhibited her work with other independent creative collectives such as The Segment Collective at their launch event at The Bicycle Shop. As well as this Emily has collaborated with independent queer musicians across the UK, such as Maddie Morris and Eden J Howells to promote the releases of their music.
Jane Hindmarch
Jane Hindmarch is a multi- disciplinary visual artist born in Haverfordwest, Southwest Wales, currently living in Stamford Lincolnshire, based at Stamford Arts Centre.
Jane studied drawing, painting and printmaking at Cambridge CCAT, BA Hons & Post Graduate Edinburgh College of Art and Montpellier Ecole des Beaux Arts, SW France and also became a teacher and taught art at all levels.
Her practice engages with nature and the changes taking place during the seasons as the climate alters. She is interested in how we connect with nature and how we are reflected in it.
Jane makes direct observational drawings from nature. These aim to realise personal perceptions as well as recording accurate information; expressed through colour, tone, texture, pattern and form. These elements are later developed into paintings and metal sculpture.
Jamie Kemp
Jamie Kemp is an artist that seeks to create enjoyable experiences digitally with his art using the processes of Environmental Concept Art. His work is clearly inspired by pop culture films and game design, crafting worlds and landscapes with care and consideration. Kemp is fascinating with the smallest of details and although this may not be evident at first glance within his Thumbnail images as a collection they begin to present themselves. This digital era is much unexplored one for Kemp and yet he still aims to push his ability where possible, which is visible in his "Own World's Thumbnails" series with each batch advancing his style further.
Trang Khieu
Taohau (Trang Khieu) is originally from Vietnam. She has been living in Lincolnshire, UK for the last 4 years with her son and her husband. She grew up in a village in Northern Vietnam, surrounded by fields and lychee’s farms. When she was 19, she moved to Ho Chi Minh City and worked as a fashion model for nearly a decade. And with a love for art, film and the other arts she started to paint in her spare time, as a hobby rather than as a profession. She is interested in abstract paintings, with one of her favourite artists being Wassily Kandinsky: the way he used color and shapes in his painting still inspires her now.
Having lived in Lincolnshire for roughly 4 years, she now sees parallels to where she grew up in rural Vietnam over 6000 miles away with pockets of urbanness surrounded by peaceful countryside. Being chosen to present one of her works in Lincoln is an overwhelming feeling for her. She expressed that she couldn’t believe that her work is “good enough” to be chosen.
Melody Phelan-Clark
Melody's textile work pursues queer phenomenology, portrayed through a paranormal lens. Exploring the word ‘queer’ in all of its meanings, she explores concepts of identity, otherness and oddness. Her graphic style, picked up through her illustrative work, emerges also in her figurative ‘characters’, each with its own identity and symbolism.
Melody is currently studying MA Fine Art at the University of Lincoln.
Will René Thomson
Will René Thomson (b. 2000) is an interdisciplinary artist from rural Cambridgeshire who now lives in Lincoln. Will René’s work mainly concerns the landscape as an entity, ecological crisis, human relationships, symbolism, and living post-trauma. Their practice primarily utilises analogue and digital media, found objects, wax, sculpture, painting, and printmaking.
Will René is perhaps best known for their Future Animals, which they define as “dream-like creatures beyond time” and a depiction of an “inorganic organic”. Through this series of works, Will René blends the familiar with the uncanny through distortion of common animal forms and the obscuration (or complete removal) of features.
Passionate about the arts community in Lincolnshire, Will René also has experience working on community events within the city of Lincoln and he hopes to continue supporting projects here for the rest of his career.
Meet the Curator: Jazz Swali
Jazz Swali is a contemporary art curator. He is currently the assistant curator of exhibitions at Backlit Gallery (Nottingham) – an lgbtq+ and female-led visual arts organisation, and he is an advisory board member of Eastside Projects Gallery (Birmingham) – an artist-run non-profit. His work with contemporary art, museums and galleries is embedded with curatorial activism, cultural and equality strategy, socio-political focuses, and alternative queer and experimental practices.
His recent exhibitions as a curator include Joy of Destruction (2023) and, in reality, these things need to be said (2021). Working with artists such as Rebecca Allen, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Robert Yang, De’Anne Crooks, Kim Thompson, and Rene Matić. Swali has developed projects such as the Outcome Programme with Backlit Gallery, Nottingham Trent University, and the University of Nottingham (2021-2024). He joined the Emerging Curators Group programme with the British Art Network, Tate, and Paul Mellon Centre in 2023 and has recently been awarded two Arts Council England project grants for independent curatorial programmes (2020-2023). He graduated from Nottingham Trent University with a BA (Hons) in photography and will graduate with an MA in museum and gallery studies at the University of Leicester in 2024.