Andrea Cotton's work is about the repetitive, mundane and monotonous. Her practice fits within these parameters but the results are widely dissimilar. She employed the process of doodling and the necessity of counting and translated these tasks to the extreme, using monotony and ennui of prison life (witnessed as a teacher within an institution) into pieces of artwork that raise questions and demand a new look at what exactly goes on in such places.She strives to convert everyday data into accessible pieces that, as well as being of immediate appeal, will also raise questions. Cotton's work is about obsession, particularly when born out of boredom or institutionalisation, and the processes in which such circumstances arise.

Biography

Andrea Cotton completed her Masters at Liverpool John Moores in 2010. She was included in 6&7 at Oriel Mostyn in 2008 and the Oriel Open at Oriel Davies. She has had solo exhibitions at Gallery Oldham and Kirkby Gallery, near Liverpool.

The focus of Tracey Eastham's work is her interest in the façade of reproduced imagery of landscapes and she is currently making work in response to images of ruins within the landscape.

Biography

Born in Preston, 1983, Tracey Eastham graduated from Wimbledon School of Art, London in 2006 with a distinction for my Masters degree from which I was also given an Axis MAStars Award. She was selected for the Future 50 exhibition at Project Space Leeds, nominated for Arts and Business’s Vision for the Northwest, and produced a solo show at Vault Gallery Lancaster. Eastham exhibited with Castlefield Gallery at Manchester Contemporary 2009 (and then with Mermaid and Monster in 2011) and was recently awarded exhibitions at D21 Gallery, Leipzig, Harris Museum, Preston and the Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh.

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.

Architectural spaces, computer games and photographic realism all play a part in James Moore’s work. The highly detailed paintings are heavily informed by the aesthetics of games, comics, sci-fi novels and, sometimes, by real places.

These paintings all picture something expansive, something concrete, conjured up from fictional environments, sketches and photographs. Motives differ from one painting to the next. One work may depict a virtual space, from an imagined world, while another might show a city park or a building from the real world. The painted scenes are never unbelievable spaces – they always stay close to the real, on the border of fiction.

Biography

James Moore is an artist and curator based in Cardiff. He studied a Fine Art degree at Manchester Metropolitan University and a Masters in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art & Design in London. He was recently shortlisted for the Welsh Artist of the Year competition, and also exhibited two paintings in the National Eisteddfod in Wales.
James exhibits regularly in group exhibitions and within his own curatorial projects. Over the past few months his work has been included in ‘Digital Romantics’ at Dean Clough Gallery in Halifax and in ‘Virtually Real’, in the Stanley and Aubrey Burton Gallery in Leeds and Blyth Gallery in London.

Lisa Wilkens’ work is fundamentally based in drawing and the understanding and exploration of images, their reproduction and development through drawing. With a strong interest in the photographic image – as cultural object of representing ‘what is\was’ – she sees her practice as a means for analysis, a method to understand and process images. Choosing images of international affairs, online news and archives, her drawings can offer a new form of reading located between personal stories and political histories.

Biography

Lisa Wilkens was born in Berlin and grew up in Bremen, North Germany. She completed a degree in scientific illustration at the University of the Arts, Zurich Switzerland graduating in 2005. In 2007, Lisa completed an MA in printmaking at Camberwell College, University of the Arts London. Her work was selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2011 and exhibited at the SS1 space Sheffield and the ICA in London. Further exhibitions include Kettle’s Yard Cambridge, Paper at Saatchi Gallery, and Block 336, Brixton. She had her first solo exhibition at PAPER in 2015, which was reviewed in the December editon of Frieze. PAPER gave a solo presentation to Lisa at Art Rotterdam 2016. She will show with CAPS during Antwerp Art Week in May 2016.

By manipulating, deconstructing and distorting the architecture and objects that are within documents and imagery, Rachel Wrigley attempts to invent new forms; and provide a distorted version of reality by investigating space as a moveable, impermanent fixture. It is these explorations that Rachel likens to the process of drawing, trying out the potential for larger scale ideas. Her playful exploration of paper explores the boundaries between drawing and sculpture. It’s papers potential as a sculptural material that allows her to re-imagine the way we create spaces and household objects.

Biography

Rachel graduated from Wimbledon College of Art in 2012 with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art: Sculpture, in 2013 she completed PAPER's first ‘Exploring PAPER’ residency and presented her first solo exhibition 'Staring at the Artex Ceiling' in 2014 at the gallery. Rachel is now based in Manchester and regularly participates in exhibitions across the UK.