Raising questions about the nature of reality and our place in the cosmos, Carr invites the viewer on a journey of awakening and enlightenment. Captivated by our quest to know the unknown, see the unseen and exist in the spaces in between, Carr presents a fleeting comprehension of an unreachable place and state of being, present but not properly understood.

At first glance, Carr’s aesthetic is elegant and sedate. On closer inspection, a subtle order and mechanism becomes apparent. Carr generates a slow drawing in of the audience, not to view an image, or a moment, but to observe change over time. A single, transforming, crucial moment of change highlights the threshold of order to chaos where both states may exist at once. The boundaries of liminal spaces stress the notions of duality, opposites, contradiction, interplay and connectivity.

The point of observation is the focus of Carr’s work. Motion and parallax are employed to create illusion, highlighting how visual perception informs our experience of reality.

Through a manipulation of natural phenomena as media and by challenging our perception of our environment, Carr provokes change in the object and the viewer’s perspective in order to open a window into a world unknown.

Carr is an international, scientific, experimental artist working on a wide range of interdisciplinary projects in partnership with MIT, Oxford University and Durham Universities. The work makes responses to a range of patterns in nature, to natural processes and phenomena, from magnetism, ice structures, light and dark matter. Her practice involves collaboration with experts and world leading researchers including engineers, chemists, geologists, cosmologists and theoretical physicists. The works produced are experimental in nature and include drawing, sculpture, kinetic works, photography and video. Of particular focus is the boundary between art, science and technology.

Studying at Central Saint Martins and Camberwell College of Art she has gone on to exhibit work at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, in collaboration with Jean-Paul Gaultier, commissioned work from seminal musicians Radiohead, and was shortlisted for the Arts@CERN COLLIDE International Award 2016 and longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2017 and 2018. 

She frequently exhibits and works internationally including the Verket Museum, Sweden and project spaces in Iceland. She spent six months at the artists’ collective HEIMA, in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland, as an artist in residence and mentor. 

Carr was awarded a Leverhulme funded residency in Durham 2017 entitled ‘Sculpting with Light’, investigating medieval and modern cosmology in collaboration with physicists, historians and cosmologists. She has presented papers at Oxford, Durham, Universities and MIT as well as taking part in panel discussions.  

Forthcoming collaborations include a project with a physicist and digital glass artist exploring a new hybrid language to visualise mathematics, and a project based at Oxford University exploring metamers, light spectra and materials development, a project based in Lund, Sweden with a geologist and a project with a performance and video artist exploring the drawn line and coordinate systems. She is currently Artist in Residence at the Josephine Butler College, Durham University, working in collaboration with Lee MacKenzie, the Writer in Residence, working on themes of environment and place in connection with the elements and cosmology.

Current artworks in progress include drawing (machines), kinetic and interactive sculptures concerning phase changes, smart materials and new technologies.

Her current artistic process is based on chance and aims to create unexpected compositions. Silvia provokes chance by painting with water that creates effects on surfaces like canvas, paper, etc… and that will determine the final composition; But lately she leaves the inspiring chance to happen, creating new shapes and compositions from a found object (e.g. a piece of wood, packaging protecting cardboard, a piece of metal) or even from situations or places of her current life, for example her first significant hurdle to overcome, when she arrived to London, was the London Underground and that contributed to her series ‘Mind the Gap’, the shapes, colours, volumes and even litter that she encountered on her daily journeys around the capital inspired her profoundly. Afterwards came the project ‘Inspired by an English garden’, it was very different to ‘Mind the Gap’, nevertheless still holds firmly to the style she has developed since coming to the city. The contrast from the underground (‘Mind the gap’) to the overground (English garden) was so vivid - the nature, vibrancy of colours, richness of combinations. As Silvia says her art is evolving as a diary would do, the series the chapters, the art pieces its pages… 

For over 20 years Ana Rosa Hopkins has collected and experimented with ‘Dead Objects’. These include common everyday objects and ones which have been abandoned, forgotten, derelict or partially destroyed which she uses in combination with her signature material, glass. She explores the symbolic and metaphorical dimensions of materials and objects and the histories and narratives which surround them within a social-political context. Her inquisitive practice is one of improvisation often leading to unexpected and unpredictable results where process and materials become more important that the object itself.  

Ana Rosa Hopkins, born in Argentina to Italian and Spanish parents, is a British visual artist and sculptor based in Manchester. She holds a PhD by Practice entitled ‘Back-story in contemporary sculptural practice: from materials to inclusion’ from Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University. She is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors and the Contemporary Glass Society and has maintained a studio at the Rogue Artists’ Studios, Manchester since 2008. 

Hopkins brings together her international career and experience with a record of ambitions exhibitions, residencies and projects. Her recent work includes: UK and international exhibitions in China, Africa, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Finland and Brazil; invited residencies at Village des Arts de Dakar, Senegal, (2017), The Royal Glass Factory, La Granja, Spain (2015-2016), International Guests Artist Residency at Plataforma Revolver, Lisbon, (2015), Ebenböckhaus, Munich (2013), and 21st Century Rural Museum, Porto and Lisbon (residency, commission and touring exhibition, 2012). 

Her work has been acquired for private and institutional collections including the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, with the support of the Contemporary Arts Society, and the Royal Glass Factory Museum, Spain. She won the neo:artprize England (2012), was selected for the British Glass Biennale (2015), and was awarded a NADFAS North West Artists Bursary (2010). Hopkins was invited as a visiting lecturer, curator and workshop leader at University of Tianjin, Academy of Fine Art, Tianjin, China (2015-2018).Currently she is working on her post doctorate and parallel projects in Fez Medina Morocco, Senegal and Poland. She continues her international collaborations, talks and written contributions to artists’ exhibition catalogues.

 

Sarah has recently returned to painting full-time and having used a multitude of mediums in her creative work now confesses she is an oil paint addict. It is “the smell, the texture, the depth and colour of pigments, total nectar”. Her paintings are diary based. The colours, textures, shapes and marks communicating a visual world full of different emotions. As she paints she is learning about herself and trying to understand the world we live in, trapping it in time, bare and honest, trying to shed all the brainwashing process that has been bombarding us from before birth.

Sarah graduated from Norwich School of Art and Design in 1984 with a first class BA Hons. in Fine Art Painting, and having won the Stowell's Trophy went on to study MA Painting at the Royal Academy. She comes from a family of creative talent. Her father, Reg Williams, was a famous painter and member of the York Four. Her life as a creator and innovative artist was set out early, starting at 8 years old, with her first public art exhibition. During the three years at Norwich Art School she exhibited regularly in the art school gallery and Norwich Castle and visited Switzerland, exhibiting and working with Kurt Rupe. More recently, she has exhibited in galleries around England and has had her own businesses in Interior Design, Architectural Design, Furniture Design and Jewellery.

Harriet Hills's installation work responds to the specifics of each new place. Opportunities to work with unknown and varied environments are essential for experimentation and the progression of her ideas. She plays with the dynamics between space, material and form, creating work that invites the viewer to engage actively.

"Having lived half my life in a rural community I am excited about the challenge of making art in this context; to address the significance of the church both as an architectural structure and as a sociopolitical centre point, historically and today."

Born in London in 1966, Harriet spent half her childhood in rural mid Wales sewing and making things. After completing a BA (Hons) Fine Art in Cardiff 1987 and learning Pattern Cutting in Liverpool she spent time making clothes, running away with the circus Archaos, and designing and making for theatre and interiors. Returning to Wales in 1995 she established a successful practice as a contemporary felt-maker, producing functional interior pieces, wall hangings and sculpture. She has taught felt-making extensively including a trip to Kazakhstan with the British Council in 2006.

In 2007 Harriet graduated with a distinction in MFA Textiles at Goldsmiths College and focused her practice on sculpture and installation. Based in South East London she has exhibited widely across the UK. Harriet continues to develop her art practice supported by work as a freelance prop-maker and art fabricator working for some of the UK’s leading artists. 

The tactile quality of materials drives Harriet’s creativity and an understanding of how a space, material or structure can affect us. Using drawing as a physical medium and the dynamic of space itself, she employs ambiguity, scale and a sense of play to set up installations that provoke enquiry. Recently she has been experimenting with performative sculpture, making moving word installations as public art, out and about in her local community. Her short film “P.E.C.K.H.A.M.” was recently shown at TATE Exchange in London.

For Eduardo Niebla, as a composer, music is the ultimate tool for sculpting feelings and thoughts in any imaginary landscape, real or unreal.  

Through his life he has been developing himself to find the sounds that more and more accurately express what his feelings and thoughts want to portray. He has been very strongly influenced by traditions - in his case Spanish gypsy flamenco, gypsy jazz, classical music, modern and experimental music, and "for a long time I have felt that art is a universal language with no barriers to humanity".

In a career spanning four decades the composer and guitarist Eduardo Niebla has been acclaimed as one of the most potent forces in flamenco jazz fusion. His concert appearances have included the Jaipur Festival India, the Queen Elizabeth Hall London, the Tbilisi International Jazz Festival, the Olympic Games Greece and Glastonbury, as well as extensive concert tours to Europe, the Baltic States, the Middle East and South Africa. 

He has collaborated with some of the top musicians in jazz, world roots and pop including saxophonist Lol Coxhill, Indian maestros Nishat & Wajahat Khan, Deepak Ram (flute) Kala Ramnath (violin), Purbayan Chatterjee (sitar), Palestinian oud player Adel Salameh, trance phenomenon Juno Reactor, the Dante String Quartet and pop musicians George Michael and Craig David. He has composed music for films and documentaries, including for the BBC, as well as large scale commissions for festivals, and has released 24 albums of his original compositions:

“His latest album demonstrates his fluid, technically brilliant guitar work… exquisite.” (THE GUARDIAN)

"A formidable guitarist and a beautifully sequenced disc by a musically fluent master of today's generation…hugely enjoyable, experimental, with many stunning moments. Unbelievably invigorating." (SONGLINES)

Eduardo was born in Morocco in 1955 to Andalucian parents, the 7th of 11 children. In 1960 they became refugees and settled in Cataluña Spain where Eduardo grew up. He taught himself the guitar and at 18 formed the cult symphonic rock band “Atila”. He was rated alongside Paco de Lucia as one of the top guitarists in the Hispanic Peninsula and in 1975 he moved to Paris where he took part in exhibitions of conceptual art with the painter Jaume Xifra. In 1978 he moved to London and in 2001 North Yorkshire and is widely regarded as one of the outstanding guitarists of his generation.