A group of artists in Bristol has coordinated a united front in the face of an Arts Council England visual arts review in which they feel they weren’t offered an equal seat at the table. They outline their intervention in a recent public consultation event while proposing a new approach for the city’s art ecology.
Emerging activity in the city’s medieval gateways, towers and vaults complements Southampton’s new Cultural Quarter development.
Alongside the launch of its first curated programme, this week Tendency Towards opens its inaugural exhibition – an interdisciplinary showcase of graduate artists from four Scottish art schools. Richard Taylor finds out more about this new artist-run initiative in Scotland’s ‘Granite City’.
In the exhibitions ‘Queer Art(ists) Now’ and ‘Notes on Queerness’, the idea of queer art is presented in an artist-led context, with work ranging from painting to film. Alistair Gentry speaks to some of those featured and explores what the amorphous, contested term ‘queer’ might mean for artists in the UK.
The advisory service for artists in the south west of England announces it will be ceasing all activities after a second application to Arts Council England’s Grants for the Arts scheme was unsuccessful.
Commissioned to write a 500-word comment piece, artists Kerri Jefferis, Sophie Chapman and Rosalie Schweiker started thinking about the words we use in the visual arts and the need for new ones. This is what they wrote.
The inaugural Coventry Biennial takes as its theme ‘the future’ and has as its main venue a relic of the city’s past – the former offices of the Coventry Evening Telegraph. Selina Oakes reports.
Artist-led spaces and pop-up shows take place throughout London this weekend as part of the fifth edition of Art Licks’ popular festival.
Hull-based artist Clare Holdstock is this week’s featured a-n blogger on the a-n Instagram feed. She talks to Richard Taylor about her practice and where she places it.
Following a successful pilot in 2015, Plymouth-based LOW PROFILE has announced that the first full edition of its Jamboree event will take place in June 2018, with a bespoke, four-day programme of artist-led professional development activities supported by a-n.
Founded by a group of artists in south west London as a studio space in 1994, Studio Voltaire currently operates under a multiplicity of different guises. Art researchers Doggerland reflect on the organisation’s hybrid structure, and speak to its head of development and communications Niamh Conneely about the many different modes Studio Voltaire employs to support artists’ careers.
Based in Birmingham’s growing cultural quarter Digbeth, Recent Activity seeks to contribute to the area’s artist-led scene without replicating the activity of its more established spaces. Art researchers Doggerland speak to one of the organisation’s founders Andrew Gillespie about working within manageable parameters to offer “something a bit different” to the area.
The recent Artist Hotel event organised by Bristol’s Knowle West Media Centre involved an overnight stay in a community centre as part of a wide-ranging discussion about community art and artist-led regeneration. Rowan Lear reports.
This week’s selection from a-n’s busy Events section, featuring exhibitions and events posted by a-n members, includes selections from Hastings, London, Gosport and Portsmouth.
The UK has the most highly developed arts infrastructure in the world. But, asks 2016-17 Clore Visual Artist Fellow Maurice Carlin in the first of two short provocations, imagine if it all disappeared overnight. Would it make a difference to your career? Would you still make art? And what do we want this infrastructure to do?
A crowdfunding campaign has been launched that seeks to support women artists over the age of 55 to continue their art practice during periods of personal, life and career change.
Talks, tours, seminars, workshops, DIY building, chopping, cooking, eating: just some of the activities undertaken by artists at a-n’s Assembly events throughout May and June 2017. Here we pull together a collection of images from the events in Margate, Liverpool, Bristol, Newcastle and Leeds.
For the latest in our Scene Report series, artist and curator Matt Bray reports from Medway in south east England on a scene with a close-knit and independently-minded community spirit.
The new strategy will tackle the growing challenges artists face in sustaining their careers, with a fundamental aim of ensuring policy makers and commissioners value the artist as well as the art.
The second edition of the artist-led Manifest Arts Festival takes place from 5-9 July at over 30 venues throughout Greater Manchester.
A psychogeographic opening up of the city through an aural tour of artist-led venues and other listening points of historical and cultural interest.
Glasgow’s world renowned artist-run gallery has postponed its annual members’ show as its unpaid committee struggles to cope with the time demands of the role.
Market Gallery’s recent Free Market symposium – supported by an a-n Artist Led Bursary – brought together thinkers and doers to discuss issues around ‘cultural resources in crisis’ and was in part informed by the Glasgow gallery’s own precarious situation. Chris Sharratt reports on three days of thinking beyond the usual.
Morgan Quaintance’ documentary explores Cubitt studios, Cubitt gallery and Cubitt education, taking a look at the history and present of the London-based organisation, its previous curators, artists and others who have been involved, as well as glimpsing into its possible future.
The new artwork by artist Kevin Hunt draws attention to some of the best activity being facilitated by emerging independent artists and curators right now in the UK.
