October

Leah Clements and collaborators Rebecca Bligh, Uma Breakdown, Elena Colman, Alice Hattrick and Lizzy Rose will form a new network of art practitioners who identify as ‘crip’, disabled, or otherwise non-conforming to standard ideas of good health.

Leah Clements is an artist based in London. Her practice is concerned with emotional experiences, the relationship between the psychological and the physical, and instances of self-loss into other people or worlds. Self/other boundaries and collective identities, the subconscious, and the impact of emotion on the body have been explored through collapse (prelude) at Muddy Yard (2017), we felt the presence of someone else at Jupiter Woods (2016), Beside Chisenhale Gallery Online Commission (2016), Beside at Chisenhale Gallery (2015), You Promised Me Poems, Vitrine (2015), and The Empath Project at Res.

She is an artist in residence at space, London on the Art + Technology programme where she has been working on a VR game titled sick bed, and will be an artist in residence at Rupert, Vilnius in June 2018.

Uma Breakdown is a Gateshead based artist and researcher concerned with the economies of horror, production and the nonhuman.

They have worked extensively in disability pedagogy and are presently an AHRC funded practice based art PhD candidate at Northumbria University with the research title “Understanding an Art practice of Mucosal Play: Abject Waste, Ahuman Desire, and Difference”. Recent projects and presentations include online commission "The Inhuman Ecstasy of Toxic Waste” for http://www.wormrefuse.org/ (2018), solo exhibition “Creature of Havok” at Serf, Leeds (2017), group exhibition “Janusware” at Res. Gallery, London (2017), video presentation "The Heartbeat of Kong or More Mouse Bites" at The Royal Geographical Society, London (2016), and collaborative exhibition with artist Alfie Strong "Green Fuzz" at Xero, Kline & Coma, London (2016).

Recent publications included in “Lossy Ecology”, edited by Louisa Martin and published by Flat Time House 2017, and "The Body That Remains", edited by Emmy Beber and published by Punctum in 2018.

Rebecca Bligh is a London-based editor and writer. Amongst other things, she co-founded, and co-edits living in the future, a journal of sf / future-oriented art and writing.  

Elena Colman is an artist based in London. Her practice explores the creation of temporary social spaces in order to explore concepts such as work/life balance, behavioural ethics in dating and what it means to break the binary of private and public life. At the moment she’s excited by hobbyism, wild yeast harvesting and the radical potential of gossip. Current projects include #makehomebrewfemme , a practice based research project exploring kitchen-based, non-industrial, fermentation and infusion processes and the social role of alcohol in art events. She is the founder of Ladette Space , a DIY project space in her flat which ran from 2014-17 and continues as a publishing house. She is currently studying on the MA course at the Slade School of Fine Art.

Alice Hattrick writes essays and criticism about art, scent, family ties, and health. She is currently working on her first non-fiction book on the subject of gendered illness and mother-daughter relationships, titled Ill Feelings. 

Lizzy Rose lives and works in Margate, Kent. Her work is diverse, spanning video, photography, ceramics, drawing, writing, curating and online blogging. Rose broadly explores community, landscape, British identity and hidden culture. She has a severe form of Crohns disease which impacts her daily life. She has spent the last 12 months in hospital, documented through Instagram @rozequartz. Lizzy Rose is an Associate Member of Open School East 2017.

She graduated from BA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in 2010. Rose worked with Matthew de Pulford and Paul Hazelton at LIMBO, an artist-led project space, from 2013-2015 and recently she has contributed to the programming team at Crate in Margate.