Previous exhibitions

Exhibition - Adapt and Adjust
by Difficult Darkroom Womxn

Tuesday 14th - Sunday 19th September 2021

The womxn: Abigail Evans, Esme Follas-Shell, Ola Teper,
Sofia Smith

Difficult Darkroom Womxn was formed during the turmoil of the first national lockdown last year. The current members of the group: Abigail Evans, Esme Follas-Shell, Ola Teper and Sofia Smith, are all met during their MA in Photography at Brighton and first came together in order to provide moral support for each other as the conditions of our education were changing rapidly. The show will consist of mixed photographic techniques along with presentations of visual research.

Abigail Evans studied graphic design before undertaking a MA in photography at the University of Brighton. Her approach to photography is both playful and serious exploring themes of family, intimacy and belonging, often combining mixed media to create detail oriented fragmentary bodies of work, which are both deeply personal and hauntingly engaging.

Much of her work focuses on how photographic processes can be used and combined with sensitivity to convey intricate human interactions, with recent projects exploring maternal relationships and the materiality of image making. Her current work continues to explore the interpersonal through an eclectic mix of photographic objects, both found and made.

Esme Follas-Shell has an artistic practice rooted inherently in darkroom photographic practices. In the past, her work has explored historic family trauma and the female experience as a photographic subject. In her current work she explores themes of grief, mental health, masculinity and family. She is instinctively drawn to fine art black and white portraiture, printing everything by hand.

Her project is an examination of the natural connections between images she has made of her partner in their shared home, and images of her father as a young man that she has selected from his archive of letters and snap shots collected by him before he passed away almost twenty years ago.

Most recently the work has started examining different aspects of spirituality and belief, surfacing as art which combines gilding with photography. Both creating and re-creating habitual rituals undertaken and influenced by her father.

Ola Teper has background in fine art photography. They work mainly with analogue and darkroom technologies, often meticulously experimenting with the boundaries of representation within the limits of what we understand as photography. Previous work has focused on the intersection of post traumatic memory and the materiality of darkroom process and image making.

Their current project developed from the notions of imagined memory, shared collective trauma and machine vision while using inherited historic photographic equipment and engaging with ontological photographic theories. After repetitive engagement with the machine the project explores the process of becoming a technical ensemble of human and nonhuman parts. Their work deftly conveys complex ideas through application of creativity to conceptual imagery.

Sofia Smith has a background in literature, creative writing and critical theory and came to photography as a mode of storytelling through the organisation Miniclick, of which she is now a curatorial member. She is also one of the founding members of Capturing the Chimera, an arts education organisation that specialises in teaching creative writing and photography.

Her previous work shows an interest in collaborative process, compulsive photographic practices, the act of collection and archival interactions. In the making of images, she is concerned with acts of transportation, exploring the camera with the world, rather than exploring the world with the camera.

Her project Pinner’s Bone makes use of a collection of historical images sourced from one-hundred-year-old medical text books. It explores the ethical questions surrounding the documentation of medical treatment for educational purposes, while engaging with her own personal history of medical treatment. The project aims to examine the intersection between the anticipated female surgical subject and the medical institution by reframing the archival images with collage and print techniques.

Exhibition - Reconfiguring
group show

Friday 10th September 2021
Saturday 11th & Sunday 12th September 2021

Artists: Tiffany Barber, Amy Dury, Craig Simpson

Three Brighton based artists invite you to The Regency Town House for a show of figurative paintings. All three artists combine fresh expressive paint with classic and contemporary subject matter. They share a fascination in capturing human existence and expressing the ways in which we connect with people, memories, moments and history. This exhibition is free to attend and there will be the opportunity to meet the artists on the opening night.

Tiffany Barber is a contemporary figurative artist based in Brighton. Born in Scotland she was raised as an athlete & the disciplined nature of her upbringing is reflecting in the meticulously detailed artworks she now creates. Tiffany spent four years Studying at Edinburgh College of Art, a term of which was spent at the Hungarian University of Fine Art. Living & studying in these cities full of classical architecture & sculpture acted as the catalyst for the inspiration behind her paintings.

Tiffany chooses to fuse classism & contemporary in her current practice. They aim to provoke a dialogue concerning current social or political issues. Placing mundane objects of the everyday with renaissance sculptures builds a connecting bridge to our realities. The concepts behind the imagery is left open to interpretations, purposefully ambiguous to act as a propeller for debate or discussion. 

Amy Dury is a painter from Brighton who works with both portraiture and narrative scenes. She studied Printmaking at the Glasgow School of Art and is now Head of Art at Varndean College. She was recently asked by the Tate Gallery to conduct a livestream portrait painting session, painting Cornelia Parker, that has been viewed 130,000 times.

'Boys on the Pyre Square', Amy Dury, 200cm x 100cm, acrylic on canvas

She says, "My subject matter is mostly figurative, I am naturally drawn to imagery from the past, especially the 70s and 80s, and the work of British social documentary photographers. Looking back into our recent past is an act of remembering and nostalgic mis-remembering, with photographs becoming the memory which constructs stories about ourselves. 

Craig Simpson is a self-taught artist, originally from Manchester and now living in Brighton. In the five years Craig has been painting he has explored a variety of subject matter though he now chooses to concentrate on figurative compositions.

'Woman in Red Dress', Craig Simpson

Craig is fascinated and takes his subject inspiration from the first half or the twentieth century. You can expect to see paintings focusing on portraits, interior living and jazz musicians. Craig is fascinated by people and feels compelled to paint individuals, he works with vibrant flesh tones to record strong facial expressions.

Exhibition - Textile Artwork
by Brighton Fashion & Textile School

Friday 3rd - Sunday 5th September, 2021

A display of vibrant and imaginative textile artworks by the students of the Brighton Fashion and Textile School.
See more textile artwork here.

Exhibition - My Adopted Family by Jo Teasdale

Saturday 7th - Sunday 15th August 2021

Jo Teasdale comes from a Fine Art background and worked in the arts for many years. Since moving to Brighton she took up photography and hasn’t looked back. Having won Landscape Photographer of the Year - Take a View - 2013, she has gone on to win competitions, been published in books and has had work shown at exhibitions.

‘My Adopted Family’ is her latest major body of work, since being awarded her Fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society in 2016. ‘My Adopted Family’ is a photographic project exploring the concepts of family, memories and inheritance. Using cherished possessions collected over time, Jo has created her own family history. This is a personal narrative that invites the viewer to travel through time and participate in the stories that unfold around them.

Jo uses large-scale prints to exaggerate the realness of objects and creative displays to transform the identity and personalities of the subjects. Her abstracts, created from extreme circumstances, produce images akin to Rothko and Blake.

Exhibition - FUSE
by graduates of
University of Brighton’s Painting BA course

Tuesday 13th - Sunday 18th July 2021

FUSE is a visual art exhibition featuring the works of the University of Brighton’s Fine Art: Painting BA 2021 graduate class.

Following the cancellation of their physical degree show due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the artists have committed to conduct and curate a successful exhibition displaying their graduate works in a group exhibition independently to the university this summer.

FUSE celebrates this coming back together after a period of anxiety and isolation through the experience of viewing art in the flesh. Art has been mediated through a screen for so many this past year and FUSE aims to reconnect viewers to the physicality of art through the sensuous medium of painting.

Featured Artists:
Lydia Durnall,  Nathan Grace,  Roxanna Salamian,  Jordyn Ive,  Isabella Connell,  Beth Swan,  Barry Joyce,  Argjenda Bitiq, 
Melissa Mullen,  George Coll,  Ella Richards,  Imogen Patel,  Hannah Mellul,  Oscar Fenner,  Harry Baker,  Caitlin Knight, 
Marty Jankus,  Gabriella Hall,  Isabelle Killen,  Mary Martin, 
Jess Harris,  Becky Harris,  Sarah Na,  George Adams,  Joe Ring,  Jade Cottrell,  Aaron Parish,  Bliss Coulthard,  Mair Elen Park,  Esther Cox,  Naomi Williams.

Art & Infection: The BioArt of Anna Dumitriu

September 2020

Anna Dumitriu has been making art about infectious diseases for over 20 years. Her BioArt works not only explore diseases like the plague, MRSA and tuberculosis, but actually incorporate killed bacteria and DNA of those organisms. She has worked with the viruses that infect bacteria, known as bacteriophages, and created works using CRISPR DNA modification.

The aim of her wide-ranging body of work has always been to bring attention to the significance of microbes and the societal, cultural and individual impacts of infectious diseases. She is inspired by history and new technologies, and her work draws threads across time. Living in the City of Brighton and Hove she has also been inspired by Regency fashion.

Dumitriu works in laboratories alongside leading scientists and medical professionals. She was the 2018 President of the Science and the Arts section of the British Science Association and holds visiting research fellowships at the University of Hertfordshire, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, and Waag Society. She is artist-in-residence with Modernising Medical Microbiology at the University of Oxford, and with the National Collection of Type Cultures (NCTC) at Public Health England.

Dumitriu’s project will look at the impact of self-isolation and quarantine due to the COVID-19 Pandemic and the risks to women from domestic violence now they are confined to their homes for up to twenty-four hours per day with their potentially abusive partners.

Image above: © Anna Dumitriu, Plague Dress (detail), 2018.

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