Ikon and Eastside Projects are continuing a collaboration which aims to provide emerging artists with the opportunity to gain experience in leading a practical workshop with young people. Six ESP members with a variety of practices have been selected to hold workshops with IYP (Ikon Youth Programme), which allows young people to develop new practical skills while gaining an insight into creative career paths.
ESP/IYP Exchange offers ESP'ers hands on experience of leading a workshop and is supported with mentoring from the Learning team at Ikon, including tutoring in session planning and a feedback session afterwards.
Each ESP'er will run a two-hour workshop, taking place once a month at Ikon Gallery from April 2017 onwards. During the workshop the artists will introduce their practice and career path and create an opportunity for Q&A with IYP members. We aim to create space for honest and inspiring sessions to give the IYP members a true insight into the careers of practicing artists and makers. The practical workshop will follow the discussion and showcase the artist’s art form in an exciting and engaging manner.
Emilie Atkinson
Emilie Atkinson works in film, photography, performance and object making to consider the dormant qualities of objects, highlighting the myths associated with them. Emilie will be facilitating a melon filled evening with IYP. Inspired by the calabash vessels housed in Birmingham University’s Danford Collection, participants will be carving their own cups and creating their own cocktails.
Emilie Atkinson graduated with a BA in Fine Art from The Slade School of Fine Art in 2014 and was awarded the The Lim Ai Fang, Woon Foundation Sculpture and Painting Art Prize for recent graduates that same year. Recent exhibitions include ESP Useful Editions at Production Show: Building/Developing/Testing, Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2017), KUKURUZ, AirSpace Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent (2016), Exposition, Unit 9, Clermont-Ferrand (2016), Do You Hear What I Hear? A.I.R. Gallery, New York (2016) and Die Distanz zwischen Dir und Mir, Freies Museum, Berlin (2015). In 2017 Emilie was selected for Master Class 2017 at the Zabludowicz Collection, London and was awarded a Radical Sabbatical Residency with ESP and University of Birmingham.
Lydia Bennett
Lydia Bennett is an interdisciplinary artist working with photography, film and performance, specialising in the medium of cyanotypes. Her workshop as part of IYP/ESP Exchange will introduce the cyanotype technique and explore how it can be used to document the movement of objects and people.
Lydia Bennett is a Birmingham based artist who recently graduated with a BA in Fine Art from Aberystwyth University.
Sophie Huckfield
Sophie Huckfield's workshop will use a range of materials, such as alginate, plaster and resin to mould and cast small objects or body parts. The workshop will introduce the potential of casting as a making medium and allow participants to understand the basic principles of the process.
Sophie Huckfield is a maker based in Birmingham. Sophie employs traditional and experimental modes of production to explore materials and making processes. Using technical expertise to produce sculpture, functional objects and writings. She is the first female Engineering Technician for the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Birmingham and has previously collaborated and worked in various creative industries from aerospace to animation.
cargocollective.com/SophieHuckfieldMakes
Ciarrai Mc Shane
Ciarrai Mc Shane’s work explores the projection of the psychological space into the physical using painting and sculpture. She will be facilitating a collaborative painting and sculpture workshop with IYP exploring the idea of ‘innerscapes’.
Ciarrai Mc Shane studied Fine Art at Hereford college of Arts and was awarded a residency at Sidney Nolan Trust at her graduate show for H Art week (2016). Ciarrai has shown work in Belfast, Dublin and London and currently holds a studio at The Lombard Method in Birmingham.
Jane Thakoordin
Jane Thakoordin's arts practice is informed by engagement with others. As a participatory artist, she works in collaboration and partnership with others to create work that has a social message and is a vehicle for change. Thakoordin's workshop with IYP will involve the creation of pieces of textile using human hair, or simulated hair, to create personalised messages regarding life and death. The session will begin with an introduction to her career, and how she has used social action, craftivism, activism and other forms of creative engagement to draw attention to social and political issues that affect us all as human beings.
Jane Thakoordin is a participatory artist, and founder of Birmingham Artivistas- a collective of activists who use contemporary art to create and deliver powerful messages for social change. A graduate of Fine Art and a Masters in Creativity and Social Work, she has combined a career in mental health and development work with a freelance arts career - these areas often overlap. Thakoordin is a recent Fellow of the Re: Present programme and a recipient of a New Arts West Midlands Research Bursary.
