Meet The Artists
Abigail Elverd
Abigail’s work examines what's happening in the world past and present, from climate change to war torn areas. She references the Old Masters colour palette, to produce a range of works in the style of abstraction and impressionism. Working from her allotment Studio in West London, she always starts the artwork with a fine coating of soil in homage to our beautiful forgiving earth. She takes inspiration from her natural surroundings in all its seasons, as well as her many travels around the world. She observes the archaeological imprints etched into the landscape of current and past histories allowing the work to be a spontaneous process of unpredictability.
Bernadette Enright
Bernadette is interested in the tension between seen and unseen. She is curious about the choices made to show or not show parts of self. She works with a variety of different media depending on the concept she is wrangling at the time. She also has a particular interest in the narrative and life of an object or person and uses materials to explore the often hidden backstory.
Carmen Van Huisstede
Cass Breen
'Carmen's practice revolves around the intersection of hauntology and materiality, where everyday objects become conduits for personal memories and societal reflections. Employing diverse media such as sculpture, installation, printmaking, ceramics, and film, Carmen prompts viewers to reevaluate their surroundings and confront ingrained societal norms. She combines video and sculpture to create intentional disconnection, challenging visitors to reconsider their roles as both media consumers and creators. Carmen's work also critiques society's reliance on surveillance technology, urging viewers to confront their complicity in systems of constant observation. Committed to material circularity, she advocates for environmental consciousness, inviting audiences to reflect on their impact and consumption habits.'
Cass Breen’s work is informed by cultural background and personal history, with a recent series of work arising from that most redolent of Catholic icons, the altarpiece. Inspired by medieval and Renaissance works in London museums’ collections, they became a vehicle for the expression of early experiences of the impact of religious artefacts, ritual and ceremony. She has recently completed a month- long residency in Newfoundland, making works inspired by her experience of the troubled fishing community there and the ferocious maritime weather. She chooses a range of materials in her work that guides the making process and are intrinsic to the interplay of form and idea.
Clare Nicholson
Eleanor Street
Clare Nicholson studied public art and design at Chelsea specialising in mural painting. She went on to paint oils and print etchings and monoprints. Her focus is on exploring the range of moods and feelings created within the ever-changing landscapes of the Scottish countryside. Clare is interested in creating a sense of mystery which she evokes through many transparent layers of thin oils. By merging the sky and landscape she seeks to convey a sense of depth and ambience. To create various atmospheres she uses a combination of soft edges and a narrow value range. Clare wishes to show how this is not just an aesthetic device but is what we see in nature.
Eleanor explores memory and emotions using images of landscape - photographs from individual moments and places, often with specific people. She translates those images through different printmaking processes as a way of capturing and preserving memories and navigating and containing unruly emotions, while reflecting on our relationship with the environment. Through traditional analogue processes, she seeks to crystallise the fleeting and intangible into something tangible, tactile and lasting. She is particularly drawn to images of the surface of moving water, capturing its restless and relentless nature.
Francesca Giuliano
Francesca is an Italian-British interdisciplinary artist based in Devon, UK. She collects and reconfigures the fragments, detritus and recovered materials that pass through her hands into assemblages that conjure personas and worlds, as a form of storytelling and (auto)biography. She creates material and immaterial narrative installations using ingredients such as household items, personal possessions, drawing, sound, moving image, the spoken and written word, recycling, memories, and data to explore the nostalgia and freightedness of objects and recollections. A by-product of her activity is a growing horror at the tide of synthetic material and memories that clutter our lives.
Jane Hughes
History’, who records it and who determines what stories are told is the focus of Jane Hughes’ practice. Seen through the prism of women’s ‘political experience’ within the institution of marriage or domestic partnerships, Jane reframes the stories of women who have been largely obscured and expunged from history directing our attention to where power resides and who has agency. In her most recent paintings, Jane explores the semiotics of the ‘veil’ worn by the bride in the wedding ceremony and its traditional association with specific ideas of feminine identity namely, idealised beauty, purity, and submission.
Jess Blandford
Katherine Rose
Jess’ abstract paintings and drawings celebrate the mundane, messy and often invisible work of family life. She works with repetition, colour, hidden layers, transparency, erasure and gestural marks. Jess uses the visual language of abstract expressionism because of its association with machismo and its high cultural value; and she playfully applies a contemporary feminist lens. Her preoccupation with the repetitive, intimate, complex and unseen labour of care, asserts the hidden value and beauty of the physical, emotional and mental loads which underpin our global economies and everyday lives. Feminist literature (particularly fiction) and critics such as Linda Nochlin, Katy Hessel and Hettie Judah, inform her practice.
Katherine Rose works across film, performance, textiles and mixed media installation. Weaving these disciplines together to question, understand and record the histories, memories and complexities of the relationships that shape us. Drawing from research into the practices of women artists and traditions of women's craft work is central to her development of ideas and processes, and provides a framework for giving a voice to the often unspoken rules and roles imposed on us by society. Katherine Rose enjoys pushing materials and processes to their limits, and establishing and exploring connections and tensions in her work.
Marina Beard
Nell Martin
Marina Nasso-Beard, a multimedia artist based in London, works primarily in oils and charcoal. Born in Milan, she grew up between the UK and Italy, earning a Fine Art degree from Camberwell University of the Arts in 1997. Her art explores the interplay between connection and disconnection, informed by themes of personal history, migration, memory, and loss. As a non-native female artist, she aims to illuminate the wonder in everyday life, capturing the sublime in both mundane and exceptional moments.
Nell Martin is a multi disciplinary artist.She works with paint, collage, ceramics, clay, textiles and metal. Her inspiration comes from nature and the world around her and visits to many countries. She works both realistically and abstractly. She has studied for many years at Morley College, while also working as a teacher. Taking courses in advanced painting, textiles and sculpture. She has exhibited works in many Morley college exhibitions both in the main gallery and in the Barry Till gallery, also in Dulwich festival, a quaker meeting house, Espacio gallery, and with FOLD at Safehouse, Peckham.