Betwixt :Publication
Betwixt 2024 places value on the different ways of working as an artist and discovers what it is that unites us. It is here that we reflect on contemporary art in motion. Toing and froing from page to place to person to practice.”
Betwixt 2024 reflects upon two years of activity from the fourth and final cohort of artists participating in the Freelands Artist Programme (2022-24).
Launched in 2018, Freelands Artist Programme is a landmark initiative to support emerging artists across the UK. Its aim is to nurture emerging artists’ practices by fostering long-term relationships and collaborations with arts organisations, helping to bolster regional arts ecosystems. Four organisations across the UK – g39, Cardiff; PS2, Belfast; Site Gallery, Sheffield; and Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh – care for five artists each, working with them for two years.
Published alongside a London exhibition in four parts, Betwixt 2024 brings together the practices of 20 artists, with a breadth of ideas and approaches. Each artist was invited to put forward an author to write about their distinctive practices with each pairing producing a piece of text found in the book.
Works from installation A Still Life in Transit of Pineapple, Cotton, and Breadfruit, with Dhuka, Tulips and further Specimens on Velvet, 2023 & Mi waan go a country go look mango, 2023
Betwixt, Beyond at Fitzrovia Chapel, London.
Betwixt is a celebration of emerging artistic practices across the UK, taking place across four sites in central and north London. It brings together works by 20 artists from Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Sheffield in a vibrant week-long event. Four distinctive cultural spaces and venues each host a group exhibition focused on a unique theme: inching towards, beneath, beyond and held
Horticultural Appropriation brings together a body of work including A Still Life in Transit of Pineapple, Cotton, andBreadfruit, with Dhuka, Tulips and Further Specimens on Velvet. commissioned by Millenium Gallery Sheffield and Mi Waan go a Country go look Mango commissioned Bloc Projects, Henry Moore Fund and Arts Council England.
A Still Life in Transit of Pineapple, Cotton, and Breadfruit, with Dhuka, Tulips and further Specimens on Velvet, 2023. With wallpaper: On the Border of my Peaceful Home, 2023.
Image credit: Dom Moore Photography
Dutch Flower Paintings:Exploring Art in Bloom at St Luke’s, Plymouth. Featuring installation
A Still Life in Transit of Pineapple, Cotton, and Breadfruit, with Dhuka, Tulips and further Specimens on Velvet, 2023. With wallpaper: On the Border of my Peaceful Home, 2023.
Mi waan go a country go look mango, 2023
Image credit: Jules Lister Film making & Photography
Mi waan go a country go look mango
Mi waan go a country go look mango” stems from long-term research of colonial plant life, particularly that of the Caribbean. A series of related works at Sheffield’s Millennium Gallery exhibited concurrently, in response to the Dutch Flower Paintings exhibition on tour from the National Gallery. Both bodies of sculptural work investigate the intricacies of colonisation and Black identity.
“Mi waan go a country go look mango” consists of the body of research which has informed the Horticultural Appropriation and Dutch Flowers projects, providing a space to open-up accessibility, allowing the viewer to map and make their associations through the information and works.
Commissioned by Bloc Projects, Sheffield UK, Henry Moore Fund, National Lottery funding & Arts Council England.
A Still Life in Transit of Pineapple, Cotton, and Breadfruit, with Dhuka, Tulips and further Specimens on Velvet, 2023. With wallpaper: On the Border of my Peaceful Home, 2023.
image credit: Jules Lister Film making & Photography
Dutch Flower Paintings: Exploring Art in Bloom at Millennium Gallery, Sheffield featuring installation
A Still Life in Transit of Pineapple, Cotton, and Breadfruit, with Dhuka, Tulips and further Specimens on Velvet, 2023. With wallpaper: On the Border of my Peaceful Home, 2023.
Amongst the opulence, desire and exoticism the Dutch flower paintings provide, lest we forget the untold stories, the wider stories intertwined in the legacy of these works. The installation explores questions of histories that have been erased, ignored and remain untold, of what is left behind when these specimens are extracted from their native lands. The violence of horti-pillage and theft in how plants got from one part of the world to another.
Commissioned by Millenium Gallery, Sheffield.
Ritual: Passion, 2023
Matt’s Gallery host’s The Amber Room
A series of Collector Dinners are a unique addition to their exhibitions. Guests are invited to dine within an installation for which everything from the table linens, cutlery, crockery and glassware to the surrounding art is made by a carefully curated group of the most exciting UK based artists. The artists that they exhibit are at the start of, or in the midst of, incredible career journeys. Everything in the exhibition and on the table is for sale.
The Right to Opacity, Black Series, 2020
Hair: Untold Stories
Hair: Untold Stories is the inaugural exhibition created for the Museums and Galleries Network for Exhibition Touring (MAGNET). It was curated by the Horniman Museum and Gardens, in partnership with Goldsmiths, University of London, Tullie House Museum and Gardens and Sheffield Museums Trust.
Mbulu Ngulu, 2022
The Art of Cutting Carbon featuring Our Carbon Creatures. Mbulu Ngulu, 2022
This exhibition draws attention to hidden emissions, known as embodied emissions. The sculptures represent the main carbon-intensive materials: concrete, steel, plastic, paper/card, and aluminium
In The Beginning, 2022. Installation 45 x 45 x 45 x 45cm. The Box, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, UK.
In the Beginning, 2022. The Box at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery
The Box, the gallery’s micro project space. Working across photography, print, and sculpture, Coakley’s multifaceted practice explores themes related to hybridity, representation, and black female identity.
Beyond The Obvious 2
The publication highlights lived experience in the region through art practice and writing. The work addresses specific challenges and their connection to cultural and educational provision. Sheffield Hallam University will be evaluating this “sector snapshot” as part of their commitment to addressing the challenges of decolonising the university curriculum and supporting greater diversity in the region’s cultural life.
Celebrating Joy with Home by Ronan Mckenzie January 17th- 31st 2022
The ambitious curation of works across four UK cities, Located on Broad Street West, Sheffield.
Fusion Arts, #Window Galleries
Some of Us are Brave 2022
This powerhouse exhibition explores themes of the feminine, form and function in the production of Black women's art.
Platform Residency at Site Gallery 2022
Selected for the fourth and final cohort of Platform an artist development initiative funded by the Freelands Artist Programme
I AM HERE, South London Gallery
New Contemporaries 2021
Exhibiting at Firstsite and South London Gallery
Image Courtesy of Ollie Harrop Photography
Antechamber at Quench Gallery 2021
Kedisha Coakley, Richard Porter, Alicia Reyes-McNamara, Leo Robinson
Image courtesy of Jonty Wilde Photography
