Fine Art Associate Staff 2023/24
Catherine Bertola
I create site-specific installations, drawings and films that address the invisible histories of women, whose roles and contributions to society are overlooked and undervalued. The work gives voice to untold narratives, excavating the past to confront contemporary inequalities that women continue to face.
My work always begins with research. Out of this ideas emerge as connections are made between unearthed narratives, imagery, site and materials, as well as personal experience. Past work has often been precarious, with installations made from materials such as dust, disappearing almost as quickly as they were made; this temporality is an integral part of the work. More recently I have begun working with film, using dancers to feel and explore space, to convey ideas and relationships with domestic space, drawing on my own experiences and frustrations with the lack of value placed upon the hidden labour of domesticity.
I have 25 years experience of working with internationally recognised commissioners and galleries such as; V&A, National Trust, Crafts Council, National Museum Wales, Government Art Collection, Leeds Museums and Galleries, Arts&Heritage and Museum of Arts & Design (New York). Research projects include; a Leverhulme Artist Residency and collaboration with Dr Lisa Taylor on an Independent Social Research Fund (ISRF) funded project, both within the School of Humanities, Leeds Beckett University .
Jayne Dent
I am an interdisciplinary artist, musician, composer and producer based in Newcastle upon Tyne (UK), working on commissioned and self-directed creative projects and as a community arts facilitator. Sound often forms the basis of my creative practice; recording, improvising and performing with electronics and voice, while often incorporating elements of textiles, writing, digital art, interactive installation, moving image and print.
History, mythology and landscape are common themes throughout my work, with a particular focus on exploring the intersection between folk art and developing technology: what stories will be told and how will we tell them in the future? My work highlights and connects through-lines from ancient cultures to the present day and uses this as a basis to dream and speculate on what is to come. I am interested in experimenting with modes of storytelling, from the literal to the surreal and the abstract.
Jen Douglas
My practice is rooted in sculpture, experimenting with materials, their characteristics and intricacies, exploring the complexities they present formally and metaphorically when manipulated and re-presented. Reference to time is a constant thread, inherent to the materials selected and context in which the work is sited.
I’m drawn to materials which are obsolete or have a temporal, ephemeral quality, previously making work with newspaper ash, defunct lightbulbs, VHS tapes, carbon paper.
More recently I’ve worked with precious metal leaf, exploiting the way it changes, tarnishes and blemishes from its original luminous state to create active, anti-static, sculptural works and installations.
I have exhibited nationally and internationally and have work in collections such as The Government Art Collection, Tyne and Wear Museums Collection, and Simmons and Simmons. I have a studio at 36 Lime Street, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Kathryn Elkin
Kathryn Elkin (Belfast, 1983) is a graduate of Glasgow School of Art (2005) and Goldsmiths College (2012) and former LUX Associate Artist (2013). She is based in Berwick Upon Tweed.
Elkin’s performance and video works concern role-playing and improvising, alongside experiments with the outtake. She has an ongoing interest in shared cultural memory (as produced by popular music, television and cinema) and the melding of this information to biographical memory.
She has habitually worked with the device of transcribed interviews and re-performed speech, and is currently developing a new moving image work that addresses the legibility of accents, transcribed speech and the relationship between voice and cultural identity, relative to broadcasting history around what was known as ‘The Troubles’ in the North of Ireland.
https://lux.org.uk/artist/kathryn-elkin/
David de la Haye
I am a field recordist, studio-based composer, and sound technician with a particular fascination for underwater soundscapes. My practice explores our perception of beauty through more-than-human interaction with nature using hydrophone and bioacoustic technologies. I often work collaboratively to integrate sound as a method of water biodiversity awareness, raising the cultural value of water. I am fascinated by microsound and concepts of the unheard, stemming from previous research in glitch and the aesthetics of digital failure. Previously a music technician, I have plenty of experience of live, studio and installation sound.
My kaleidoscopic portfolio includes international music tours, artist residencies, educational workshops, and museum installations. Recent awards include Sound of the Year, winner of Ivan Juritz Prize (Sound Art category) and a nomination for an Ivor Novello Composer Award (Jazz category).
Dr Narbi Price
I’m interested in painting as a receptacle for memory, and in how collective and personal memory can be evoked visually.
My paintings feature seemingly everyday scenes which hold additional historical, cultural or personal significance, applying diverse techniques to a photographically derived painting style. The work takes sites of chosen events and considers notions of pilgrimage and history through the act of painting.
My practice-led PhD explored the legacy of The Ashington Group of artists (also known as the Pitmen Painters) and looked at the post-industrial landscape of Northumberland through the lens of previous artistic activity.
Previous awards include the Journal Culture Awards Visual Artist of the Year 2018, winner of the Contemporary British Painting Prize 2017, prizewinner in the John Moores Painting Prize 2012 and I was profiled in ‘Vitamin P3 – New Perspectives in Painting.’ I show with Vane in the UK, and GalleriaSIX in Italy.
narbi.price2@newcastle.ac.uk
www.narbiprice.co.uk
Dr Olivia Turner
Dr Olivia Turner is an artist and researcher. Her practice moves between sculpture, installation, performance and moving image to explore themes of illness, wildness, feminism and bodily agency. The work is about what it means to be an examined body; about what it means to be in my body. Her recent works perform interventions in the Shefton Collection of Greek Art and Archaeology. She frequently collaborates with Classical archaeologist Dr Sally Waite.
Exhibitions include The Way My Body Feels and You Echo Through Time, Great North Museum; Confabulations; O (Symptom), Ex Libris Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne; Confusion of Tongues, AirSpace Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent; The Body, Round Lemon; Women and Power, National Trust; Bish, Bash, Bosh, We Are The North, Liverpool; Circus Between Worlds, Glasgow International; DECAPOD, AirSpace Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent.