Frances is currently exploring the notion of presenting artworks in a state of flux, unresolved and tipping into the next stage of transformation. She would like to expose at what point an artwork becomes an actual piece of art and the mechanisms an artist employs to make this process possible. Frances is primarily a printmaker, though her practice pushes the boundaries of what can be achieved through these processes. Starting with a simple form, she will explore this through photography, sculpture, drawing, as well as printmaking.

Biography

Frances completed her printmaking masters at the Royal College of Art in 2004. She is based at the Royal Standard and lecturers at Liverpool Hope University. She is also manager of the Bluecoat print studios in Liverpool. She recently completed her Exploring PAPER residency and is currently working towards her solo exhibition at PAPER in January 2015.

Sarah Eyre's work is concerned with an abiding fascination for the uncanny and the surreal in everyday objects, as well as an on-going exploration of relationship between hair and wigs and their relationship to gender, identity and the female body. Penetralia explores the wig's suggestive possibilities in their disembodied state. Sarah has manipulated and photographed wigs in order to draw attention to their strangeness. By cutting through the resulting photographs she is literally opening up the wig in order to create playful relationships between interior and exterior, as well as suggest different spaces where new meanings can be explored. As fragile paper experiments, they hint at the delicate nature of femininity as a masquerade, and offer glimpses of the surreal and uncanny in otherwise everyday objects.

Biography

Sarah Eyre is a lens-based artist, and part-time lecturer based in Manchester. She completed a BA (Hons) in Photography at Nottingham Trent University and an MA in Documentary Television and Film production at the University of Salford. Recent exhibitions have included My Head is an Animal at South Square, Bradford, and Spreads – an artist’s book exhibition in Arles, France and Undressing Identity at The Gallery, Blackpool. She has been involved in several collaborative projects in the Northwest, Diorama: Blackpool’s Hidden Theatres and Agoraphobia, Blackpool, The Fielden Project, Todmorden, Twice Removed with 'A Family Of' - supported by Cornerhouse Gallery, and Madlab, Manchester, Bitmapping and Subplotting interactive media projects exhibited at Cornerhouse Manchester and Mid Pennine Gallery, Burnley).

Phil Hopkins’ drawings have a devotional quality. Drawing on the humble, mundane materials and images that dominate our everyday experience, they worry away at them until their physicality and their meaning is transformed. The kitsch poetry of paint-colour names on DIY store colour charts carry the pathos of suburban aspiration, and catalogues of furniture or consumer goods reveal the ways in which we strive to assert our individuality within the limitations of commodified options. These are carefully chosen surfaces on which to draw, and their sheen of advertised sophistication is erased when Hopkins works with these materials. The erasure takes place not decisively, not cleanly, but partially, hesitantly, by means of a roughly scumbled layer of paint reminiscent of the white-smeared surface of windows behind which redecoration work is taking place. The schematic image of the house, and the narrow line of the garden path, ubiquitous in Hopkins' work over many years, remind us simultaneously of a place of refuge and a place of confinement. They signify both the private home of the 'nuclear family' and the social space of the housing estate, embodying both the separateness of the individual and the uniformity of the mass. (Derek Horton, 2014)

Biography

Born in Bristol England, Phill Hopkins studied at Goldsmiths College in London. He lives and works in Leeds. Known as a sculptor, his recent work has centred predominately around drawing. He was recently included in Becky Beasley’s ‘I Fall to Pieces’ (named after his piece) at Leeds City Art Gallery; Catalyst: Contemporary Art and War - Imperial War Museum North, Salford and Parallel Lines & Model Gallery, Leeds. He is represented in various public collections, including, Imperial War Museum, London; Stadt Dortmund, Germany; Hungarian Museum of Photography and Leeds City Art Gallery.

Richard Meaghan's works on paper are born from imaginations, thoughts and inventions manifested in oil and graphite. Their varied beginnings invariably start with questions of human existence and why we are here. From the cosmological to the merely topical, Meaghan's thoughts take on an evolutionary journey from ancient history and theology to ideas of globalization, control and political agenda. Here, with world affairs as they are with climate change and genetic engineering Meaghan's landscapes often have eschatological connotations that could be depictions of our future or echoes of our past.

Biography

Richard Meaghan (born 1970) lives an works in Liverpool. He has exhibited nationally and internationally as artist and curator. Recent exhibitions: 'Lure & the Seducer' Christoffer Egelund, Copenhagen (2009) 'Getting off at Edge Hill' Metal, Liverpool (2009) Liverpool Art Prize (2009) FACT (2010), Cornerhouse, 'The Last Adventure of the Great Alonso, Primo Alonso, London (2011), Liverpool Biennial (2012) 'Beautiful Things' Next Door Projects, Liverpool (2013)

Jenny Steele’s practice explores the relationships between our occupation of digital space and physical space, their corresponding architectures, and our suggested movement within these spaces. She has recently been focusing on tracking inhabitation within the urban spaces of the North West. She explores her ideas through the processes of animation, printmaking, bookmaking and drawing.

Biography

Jenny Steele has been practicing as an artist for ten years, and is a graduate of MFA at Goldsmiths (2007) and BA Fine Art (First Class) at DJCAD (2002). She exhibits internationally, and has undertaken residencies in the UK and China. She is currently Artist in Residence at Manchester School of Art, and is completing a commission for InCertainPlaces (Preston). She has also recently been shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2012.

Simon Woolham's work is concerned primarily with occupied spaces and the narratives that unfold in them. His drawings of school playing fields, junked underpasses and the like often contain text with the tone of dialogue. Through these glimpses of speech the dilapidated environments come to life in a skint version of enchantment: a tree stump or a broken fence are filled with the meanings of the events that go on around and about them. In his attempts to unearth this unpredictable and fragile process of memory, he uses biro drawings, paper interventions, animation, video and text.

Biography

Simon Woolham is currently based in Macclesfield. He has exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions at the Lowry in Salford and Chapter Gallery in Cardiff, as well as numerous national and international group exhibitions. In 2008 he was included in the first Tatton Park Biennial and in 2006 he was Artist-in-Residence at the Baltic in Gateshead. He won the Mostyn Open 11 at Oriel Mostyn in 2001.