exhibition

(M)other Wild 2nd & 3rd August 2025

| Claire

An event by (M)other Collective as part of Drawing Out Hilbre with BADA at Hilbre Archipelago
Artists: Jo Eyles, Lydia O’Hara, Lucy Jones, Lena and the Sea, Emma Thackham, Claire Weetman.

The six members of (M)other Collective, all artist-parents from across the North West, are researching how women can consider their “wild nature” and find their natural “home” whatever that may look like for each individual, without being distracted from their creative energy by domestic/commercial life. This direction of research stems from the text ‘Women who run with wolves: Contacting the Power of the Wild Woman’ (Clarissa Pinkola Estés 1992). By inhabiting Hilbre island and experiencing its ecosystems, (M)other artists have connected with animalistic characteristics and attuned to the aspects of the natural environment that nurture and inspire creativity.

Our explorations of mothering and practices of care in this remote location have informed our collective creative practice where we aim to respect the ebbs and flows of creativity within (m)otherhood – connecting to the central research themes of Drawing out Hilbre that explore Sustainability and Self Sufficiency, Time and Tides and Engagement with Nature.

On the 2nd and 3rd August 2025 you’re invited to join (M)other Collective on Hilbre Island where they will share some of the outcomes of their research on Hilbre, through exhibition of works in the buildings, installation of works around the island and opportunities to join the artists in acts of movement, rest, connection and wildness. 

If you are coming to Hilbre Island please wear appropriate clothing and footwear for the weather and walking across rocks. We do not recommend that you bring pushchairs. Please bring your own drinking water and refreshments. Two compost toilets are available on the main island.

Saturday 2nd August 2025
11am: Meet at the Ice Cream Stall at West Kirby to join (M)other Collective on the 1-hour low tide walk to Hilbre Island
11am-2pm: Visit installations and exhibited work across the island and within the Buoy Master’s Buildings.
12:30pm “I Become the Island” an interactive site specific performance with Lydia O’Hara. Join a tour of the island, performance and an invitation to participate in her Hilbre Island inspired yoga. Visitors will be given a keepsake to take away from their experience.
2:00-2:30pm Last chance to leave Hilbre for the mainland if you don’t want to stay overtide. 
3pm – 8pm Experience being stranded on Hilbre over-tide. Visit installations and exhibited work across the island and within the Buoy Master’s Buildings. Share your picnic alongside creative conversations about (M)other Wild
3pm Finding Solitude, an invitation to view Claire Weetman’s sculptural chairs installed around the island and to find a seat for creative reflection as the tide comes in. 
5pm Beachcombing at High Tide with Lena and the Sea as a creative act of rest.
8pm-9pm Join (M)other Collective for a sunset walk back to the mainland 

You can come and go to the island between 9am – 2pm on Saturday 2nd August whilst the tide is out. If you decide to stay past 2:30pm then you will need to wait on the island until 8pm when the tide has gone back out. Please follow the advised walking route from West Kirby via Little Eye and Middle Eye.

Sunday 3rd August
11am: Meet at the Ice Cream Stall at West Kirby to join (M)other Collective on the low tide walk to Hilbre Island.
11am-3pm Visit installations and exhibited work across the island and within the Buoy Master’s Buildings. 
12:30pm Emma Thackham hosts a shared lunch and conversation connected to her research ‘The Islands Beneath Our Skin’
1:30pm Jo Eyles invites you to join her on a short walk to gather natural materials for a mark-making workshop. 
3pm-3:45pm Last chance to leave Hilbre for the mainland before the tide comes in.

You can come and go to the island between 9:30am – 3:45pm on Sunday 3rd August whilst the tide is out. Please follow the advised walking route from West Kirby via Little Eye and Middle Eye.

About the artists

Emma Thackham  
@onelifeartists

Emma is an interdisciplinary artist and art psychotherapist. Her research explores topics such as social action, performativity, embodied knowledge, cultural heritage and art therapy.  

The Islands Beneath Our Skin is the working title of a new research project exploring creative practices and connections between communities in the UK and The Caribbean. 

Her performative pilgrimage, bearing the Flag of Dominica, to the liminal tidal Hilbre Archipelago imagines the land as a portal between islands, and in quiet reflection she summons and honours ancestors within. 

Her sculptural work is currently exploring the realm of the seven feminine archetypes, (the Mother, the Maiden, the Huntress, the Mystic, the Sage, the Queen and the Lover).

Claire Weetman 
@claireweetman

Claire Weetman is crafting three chairs – self portraits of a search for solitude in wild outdoor spaces – woodlands, meadows and beaches. Places that are familiar and everyday when explored with others but luxurious and wild when explored alone.

In the text Camera Obscura, Roland Barthes compares familiar landscapes to the maternal body “There is no other place of which one can say with such certainty that one has already been there.” The wild locations where Claire has sought creative solitude from motherhood inspire the laborious processes used to camouflage the recognisable, familiar form of the chairs. Natural, elemental processes of fire, earth, air and water have slowly and meditatively altered these domestic objects so that they can exist in the wild – an attempt to turn a place where the maternal body may be able to sit into the landscape itself. Installed around Hilbre Island, this collection of re-crafted chairs aims to capture the tension between a desire for connection and a need for space for ourselves.

Claire’s work informs an activity on Saturday 2nd August when visitors to (M)other Wild are invited to experience a period of solitude in the remote location of Hilbre island.

Lydia O’Hara 
@lydiaoharaartist

Lydia is a multidisciplinary artist and art therapist whose approach allows the concept for each work to dictate its most appropriate medium. To date this has included video, performance, painting, music, and more. Lydia’s practice takes an interest in embodied cognition and unconscious processes, exploring this from various perspectives including womanhood, lived experiences, collective consciousness, and motherhood. Whilst on Hilbre Island Lydia is interested in developing her work exploring “wild nature” in women, connecting with pre-evolutionary animal aspects that remain in human nature. Through observing life on the island: creatures, plants, and elements, Lydia will find ways to internalise a piece of this wild place to return to whenever she needs. This will feed into a larger piece of work looking to share this process with others, and complement her series of free hanging outdoor paintings depicting the isolating experiences of mothers and babies during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“I Become the Island” will be an interactive site specific performance on Hilbre Island on the Saturday of (M)other’s sharing event. Lydia O’Hara will invite visitors to join her on a tour of the island, followed by a performance, and finally to participate in her Hilbre Island yoga. Visitors will be given a keepsake to take away from their experience.

Lena and the Sea 
@lenaandthesea

During the residency I sank into solitude, really felt rest, my mind had time to wander, taking time to beach comb was a simple joy. I slept on the sand. I watched seals. Taking this time for myself always makes me a better mother. When I return they get a mother that feels nurtured and so can nurture them. 

At Hilbre I took my canvas sheets on an adventure, bathing with me in a rock pool, laying out covered in moss and seaweed and stones and the salt and sand of the island. I worked into them with charcoal and water. I lay them to dry on the flagstones of the Buoymasters house.

I will take the canvas sheets back to the studio and work on two Hilbre abstracts: dark green, grey, the blue of the mussels, sandstone and clay before returning them to exhibit in the Buoy Master’s house in August.

Join Lena and the Sea on Saturday 2nd August for beachcombing at high tide with Lena and the Sea as a creative act of rest.

Lucy Elizabeth Jones 
@cestrianpedestrian

Drawing out Hilbre: ‘Accumulate’

Much like tumbleweed attracts and accumulates material, so do I as an artist, Accumulate experiences, techniques, influences and understanding of the world. In this globe shaped structure they merge and fuse together into an ever evolving entity. 

A warp and a weft is made up of freshly harvested willow, organically interlaced through the found metal structure. Into which I start to weave a variety of found and created materials through the uneven grid. The strips of fabric are extracts from my experiences as an artist, not just of being on Hilbre, but the events leading up to and what I will eventually take away or leave behind. 

I often keep any selvedges or offcuts of fabric from various projects as well as the edges of paintings. They are intriguing to me because what deems them worthy of discarding, is what makes them worthy of keeping and using in a different way. They are not bound by intention. Their arbitrariness  translates as honesty, and the stories they tell are not polluted by self consciousness. I secure them to the structure by hand stitching. The imperfect nature of each stitch akin to a person’s handwriting or of an artist’s gesture or touch. 

As I sat in the Buoymaster’s house on the island watching for seals out of the window, I wondered about all the women that had sewn in that room before, they might have sewn fishing nets, work clothes or even a family tree, with far greater dexterity than myself. 

The slithers of fabric and photos interwoven, form a rapidly solidifying sphere. A shape that is important to me particularly in this setting embodying the circularity of nature most pertinently in the ebb and flow of the tides and waves, their endless movement and change, each the opposite of another, interdependent and uncontrollable. 

Jo Eyles 
@the_joy_perspective

Jo is a visual artist, DJ and educator based in Liverpool. As a keen advocate for both the arts and social justice, she enjoys engaging with and empowering communities through her practice. Her mixed media approach embraces drawing and painting, photography, print, collage, textiles, and sculpture. She combines expressive use of pattern, form and colour with experiments in a diverse range of materials, endeavouring to limit the environmental impact of her work by using sustainable and recycled materials wherever possible, including recycled cardboard boxes, fabric remnants, and household waste.

Much of Jo’s recent work centres around humanity’s place within the universe and its impact upon Earth’s ecosystems. She has given her series of environmentally-conscious artworks  titles with double meanings that examine the connection between humans and the natural world, and ask us to question how we can develop a more symbiotic relationship with our surroundings and the planet as a whole.

Jo currently juggles the various strands of her creative practice with being a full-time educator and busy parent. Work on Hilbre has enabled her to connect with nature and enjoy solitude, to sink into the natural rhythms of light and tide that govern the archipelago, and to work in harmony with the landscape, developing an understanding of the inherent qualities of the natural materials found there.

Her new work examines the spaces in between: spaces found between layers of rock or across the sands that connect each of the islands, spaces in time between the cycle of tides, and the spaces for reflection that allow Jo to balance her role as a working mother with that of an artist. She explores themes that relate to both motherhood and the nature found on Hilbre: fertility, growth, nurture, protection, vulnerability, erosion, strength and resilience.

Jo invites you to join her on Sunday 3rd August for a short walk to gather natural materials for a mark-making workshop.

For more information
To learn more about the Drawing out Hilbre project and the other artists who are working in residence there in summer 2025, please visit the BADA website.

Emergences – Artworks with Potential

| Claire

by Rebecca Ainsworth, Joao Coelho, Gee Collins, Lucy Davies, Jeff Gilgannon, Cate Glasson, North West Miners Heritage Association, Claire Weetman, Angela Wilkinson.

Event space 1, Haydock Street, St Helens, WA10 1DH
Thursday 26th September 2024 18:30-22:00 VIP launch event 
Saturday 28th September 11:30-17:30 as part of the SUN STREET SOCIAL PARTY
Other times by appointment.

What does a connected community of ideas look like? What are St Helens artists creating that could grow into thoughtful, beautiful work? “Emergences” showcases the work of nine artists who live and work in the town, highlighting their potential.

Brought together in the space of a fortnight, these artists represent the area’s existing infrastructure and networks. Rebecca Ainsworth, Gee Collins and Claire Weetman, all from Platform Studios, have previously worked with Kindred LCR on plans for a secure future for artists studios amid the Town Centre redevelopment. Angela Wilkinson, also a Platform Studios member, Jeff Gilgannon and Joao Coelho have received support through St Helens Arts in Libraries’ Artists Together programme. Lucy Davies is a recent graduate from the BA (hons) Graphic Design University Centre St Helens; Cate Glasson is a resident glassblower at the creative hub that is The World of Glass; and North West Miners Heritage Association are one of the many active community organisations who connect the arts to the people and stories of St Helens.

Each of the works in the show connect to the title, Emergences. The idea that creative work, like a germinating seed, begins in one form that contains the research, the processes and energy to grow into something bigger. Explore how the artists’ works connect to each other and how the town, its people and resources can create a nurturing environment for creative ideas like this to flourish. 

About the venue:
Kindred LCR in partnership with St Helens Borough Council have taken over the old Catapult building on Haydock Street (rounding the corner into Bickerstaffe Street) to create ‘Street and a Half’ (SnA).  Event space 1 is a unit that shows the current space and its potential to be part of a new home to help socially-trading organisations (STOs) and makers grow. 

Credits:
Venue and funding support: Kindred LCR
Projection mapping and equipment: Focal Studios
Glass blowing facilities and production expertise: Marcin Czepiga and The World of Glass
Exhibition producer: Claire Weetman
Poster and marketing design: Gee Collins

For more information or to book an appointment to see the show, contact Claire.

About the artists:

Rebecca Ainsworth presents a large graphite rubbing taken from the floor of The World of Glass hot glass studio. The image is a trace of the creative process of the glass blowers and transforms a stage in Rebecca’s process of creating paintings into a large-scale drawing that marks the layers, echoes and human imprints on places.

Rebecca Ainsworth: The home of the green molten glass, Graphite rubbing on paper

Joao Coelho creates detailed dioramas that capture the rustic, weathered beauty of hidden nooks and the eerie charm of an abandoned alley. Every detail, from the cracked walls to the rusty shutters, tells a story of forgotten urban history in miniature form. Exhibited in this space that is between past and present uses, with its own marks of deterioration and potential Joao wants to connect with others as he develops his creative passion.  

Joao Coelho: Echoes of the Inferno, Mixed Media

Gee Collins is an artist and artworker. They create art with other people, support creative activity, ask lots of questions and listen to people’s answers. With a bit of luck this means creating spaces for justice, challenging and expanding learned ideas of what the world is allowed to look like. 

Gee Collins: And yours, Engraved mirror and glass

Lucy Davies produced a series of two-colour risograph and lino prints of shop buildings in and around the town centre of St Helens as part of her recent degree show. Some of these shops such as Burchall’s Bakery are well loved and still in use, others wait, frozen in time until they are demolished. Lucy’s printmaking helps us to remember the people and stories behind these locations and to appreciate the interesting features and architecture that surrounds us.

Lucy Davies: Flip in St Helens, Flip Book and Burchalls, Top Nails, Charity Shop, Jordan’s Employment Agency, Risograph prints.

Jeff Gilgannon and Angela Wilkinson are collaborating on a project called “Our Town”, creating amazing images which present the regeneration in a way which engages the local community and attempts to cultivate a positive view of the town, both now and in the future. They aim to showcase the town’s changing places and architecture and its changing population in unique perspectives which creates enthusiasm for the transformation and strengthens community bonds. 

Cate Glasson is a glassblower at The World of Glass who was moved by the history of The Wood Pit Disaster in 1878 to create an installation of glass bells that can sound out for every man and boy that perished giving a light filled ringing voice to those whose lives ended prematurely in the dark and horror below ground that day.  Each bell is engraved with a person’s name from the NMRS list of lives lost, connecting family names to people who live in the Borough today.

Cate Glasson with Marcin Czepiga: Wood Pit Bells, Hand blown and engraved glass

North West Miners Heritage Association and their resident artist Jim Housley create replica Pit Banners that celebrate the heritage and communities of former mining areas in St Helens. These banners are used in place of the, now delicate, originals that reside in archive collections to celebrate and remember the spirit and culture of St Helens past mining communities. NWMHA aspires to become a centre of excellence in the production of these banners.

North West Miners Heritage Association: Clock Face Colliery Banner, Textile.

Claire Weetman presents ‘Constellations of Kindness’ a geodesic dome, pin-pricked with illustrations from the adapted story of Hoshi and the Lucky Stars, about the power of a community working together. Works incorporating storytelling performances are a new avenue for Claire in her varied work as an artist, educator and producer of community-engaged projects.

Claire Weetman: Constellations of Kindness, Pin pricked card and audio.

Finding Solitude – an exhibition of drawings

| Claire

Venue:
The Coffee Stop Café, St Mary’s Market, St Helens, WA10 1AR
1st February – 30th March 2024
9am-5pm Monday – Saturday

You can also view the works in an online space if you are unable to make an in person visit to St Helens.
View the exhibition in an online space here

Claire Weetman presents a collection of drawings of chairs that invite you to sit down, but that time to rest alone is just out of reach.

This collection of pencil drawings, created by Claire in 2023 and 2024, began by thinking about how time alone either physically or mentally is difficult to achieve as a parent. Chairs are perched precariously on branches or balanced on top of a tottering tower of bins that need emptying. The chairs are inviting, you’d quite enjoy that seat for yourself, but ultimately, all of these chairs and their offer of rest are unusable. 

Each chair is based on a real chair. Three of them were seen abandoned outside while walking to school with her children. Other drawings feature real chairs that have been moved to a more surreal setting to elaborate on the feeling of never being able to find time alone. 

Claire started making this series of drawings during an artist residency in 2023 with Wild Rumpus and (M)other Collective, where she and a group of artist-mothers stayed in the woods for 4 days. While sitting on an old wooden dining chair in the middle of a field she read Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida. In that book he compares familiar landscapes with the maternal body. “There is no other place of which one can say with such certainty that one has already been there.” Within these drawings, Claire has aimed to capture the familiarity of a chair and to set it in a location that we feel we might have visited. But within each drawing there is some barrier, either physical or emotional, that prevents us from sitting down in peace. 

Finding Solitude - never disconnected. A pencil drawing of a wooden chair in a field of long grass. A telegraph pole is visible in the distance.
Finding Solitude - precarious balance. A wooden chair with an arched back support is balanced high up in the branches of a tree.
Finding solitude - pilgrimage to the bins. A wooden chair sits on top a tower of three metal rubbish bins.

The original drawings are available to purchase at a cost of £150 each, and prints will be available at a cost of £15 each. Please use the contact form on Claire’s website if you wish to make a purchase.

We Reside* Here

| Claire

As the lead artist for Artists Together – the artist development strand of work for St Helens Libraries and Arts NPO – I’ve been working on a programme of work during 2023 called Reside*

During 2023 St Helens has been the Liverpool City Region Borough of Culture, so for this creative year the programme was built around this thought:

“What if every artist who is RESIDEnt in St Helens was recognised as an artist-in-RESIDEnce for the year?”

We started the year with a pop up exhibition at The World of Glass that mapped the locations of artists around the borough and shared what they were planning on working on during the year. Following opportunities for artists to get help with funding, planning and commissions, opportunities to make work together, 1-2-1 feedback from curators and producers and chances to share ideas with each other, we have arrived at the end of the year and the production of We Reside* Here.

We Reside* Here is both a publication and exhibition that maps and showcases the work of over 60 artists in St Helens. The document features a map, illustrated by Cady Davies and with graphic design by Karen Hitchcock, that places each artist in the area of St Helens that they are based, showing our audience that artists aren’t rare beings, only to be found in the big cities of Liverpool and Manchester. These artists are our neighbours, the people you meet on the school run, the folks standing at the bus stop, and they are only a small proportion of the people who bring light, colour, stories and the joy of creativity into St Helens.

As well as mapping some of the artistic population, the We Reside* Here document provides guidance to artists. There are examples of how a number of artists are making their work, designed to provide inspiration and support to other artists seeking to develop. A list of organisations who support people’s creativity features, along with a breakdown of what the process of Reside* was during 2023, so that other artists can pick this up and make new work in the future.

The exhibition that accompanies We Reside* Here is installed at St Mary’s Market in the large event space from 25th November – 20th December. This features an installation of the map, with its cardboard-cut-out style illustrations and showcases the work of many of the 60+ artists, whilst signposting audiences to other works that exist in locations around the town.

Reside_onscreeninfopackDownload
ResideMap-onlyDownload

Artists Together and We Reside* Here is supported by

The Art of Motherhood: An Exhibition of Resilience and Strength

| Claire

Saturday 7th October 2023, 11am-7pm, Sunday 8th October 2023, 12-4pm.
Stretford Public Hall, Chester Road Stretford M32 0LG

Three of my Finding Solitude drawings that were created during a residency with (M)other Collective at Wild Rumpus’ Whirlygig Woods in July 2023 and my Landing Lights window blind feature in this exhibition in October 2023. The exhibition showcases art, photographs, music, recorded histories and performance that capture the experiences of mothers during World War II and the Covid-19 pandemic.

The opening event on 6th October features a special performance by the cast of Motherhood Unscripted of scenes and songs from the show, as well as a drinks reception with nibbles.

This exhibition is part of Mothers in Crisis: Then & Now, a two-year-long creative heritage project delivered by enJOY arts with mothers from across Trafford. Delivered with support from Stretford Public Hall and the People’s History Museum.

(M)other is having a baby

| Claire

Exhibition, 21st-26th January 2023
Village Hall, Great Northern Warehouse, Deansgate, Manchester, M3 4EN

(M)other is a collective of artist-parents based in the North West of England that formed during 2022, and for our first action together, we’re holding an exhibition of sketchbooks, emerging ideas, and introductions to our works in Manchester during January.

I’ve been working on a new maquette piece – lots of the things I make in my studio are experiments at a manageable scale that I think could become something bigger, more complicated, more specific to a location. I’ve been bringing together some poetry and drawing that reflects on the time spent within the home, as a mother during maternity leave in 2019 and the subsequent year of 2020. I’ve been exploring creating digital drawings and cutting text into the printouts of those drawings. I’ll share the completed work in full once it’s on show, but for now here’s some pictures of the making process.

Artist-Led in St Helens

| Claire

Creative Activity in Empty Shops, 10 January – 31 March 2022

In 2022 St Helens Council awarded a tender for me to deliver Creative Activity in Empty Shops as part of the Welcome Back Fund, funded by the European Development Fund. The project was promoted under the title ‘artist-led in St Helens’ with Claire project managing the delivery. A team of freelance artists supported Claire in the delivery; as installation and invigilation assistants, social media support and project management support. Partner organisations including Wonder Arts, Short Supply and Heart of Glass supported delivery of the programme. Here is a summary of what happened.

Print 20:20 exhibition by Platform Print, Buzzhub and Hot Bed Press in the window of Salsa for an 8 week period
Emmer Winder
Julie
Three Artists Together events, providing space for more artists local to St Helens to come together in a space, for the first time in 2 years, to make new work in the town centre.
Aliens, Zombies and Monsters & Alien Agency Exhibitions open in 2 empty shop spaces on Church Square for 8 days during February half term, welcoming over 1000 visitors through the doors in that time. Delivered in partnership with St Helens based Wonder Arts and working with local independent businesses St Helens Bookstop and Geek Retreat to build interest in St Helens’ town centre offerings. Featuring a day of zombie-inspired dance performances by MD Creatives.
SLAP DASH: 1-day artist residencies on 3 March, 1-day symposium on 5 March and 6-day exhibition in an empty shop in St Mary’s Arcade to research ways of creating a culturally centred town centre. Working with North-West based organisation Short Supply to build a regional audience to visit and work in St Helens and supporting local independent businesses such as Phoenix Plant Based Eatery, Rennies and St Helens College Print Room in the production of the events.
Our Susan’s an artist… and Traces of the Town.
A 1 day event where visiting members of the public could share the creativity that they treasure that doesn’t usually get seen in a public space and where they could explore what St Helens town centre means to them through drawing – leading to a new interactive artwork and the exhibition of 10 illustrated photographs by Grace Collins in the windows of 3 more empty shops in St Mary’s Arcade, which will be in place for a minimum of 3 months March – June 2022.
The Many Uses of a Blanket and A Cosy Jumper exhibitions (both projects originally commissioned by Heart of Glass) across 2 empty shop spaces for 7 days, creating comforting spaces where people could reflect on connection and creativity within our community and where two St Helens artists were commissioned to create additional new works.
Claire Eddleston’s spinning wheel situated in the Many Uses of a Blanket and Cosy Jumper exhibition. Photographer: Kelza Pilkington

And here’s the key facts and figures:

  • 63% of the total £30,000* budget was spent directly in St Helens supporting local retailers (9%) and the St Helens Arts economy (54%), predominantly to individual artists living, working and studying here who will go on to spend their income in the local retail economy.
  • A total of 1738 people came through our doors on the 22 days we were open
  • From the postcodes we’ve collected, 73% of visitors were from St Helens, with 13% from Liverpool City Region and 13% nationally.

*numbers are rounded

Who did we work with?

  • 53 individual artists were involved either in the creation of works or as support staff for the events
  • Local independent businesses including Phoenix Plant Based Eatery, Bookstop St Helens, Geek Retreat, Rennies, Vinyline, Retro Chimps, 1 hour stitch, Victoria Flowers.
  • Local and regional arts partners including Wonder Arts, Heart of Glass, St Helens Arts Service, St Helens Libraries, Short Supply, Buzzhub, MD Creatives, Hot Bed Press.

“The major benefits …was being able to see a variety of ages, genders, backgrounds interacting with artwork in the heart of the town centre. The reactions were…of surprise and intrigue and to see the joy that art work can bring to audiences that aren’t not expecting to see it on a routine outing was wonderful.”

“The Benefits for our members have been extraordinary. We have been able to showcase the work of our talented members in various locations around the Town. It has enabled their local community to recognise and appreciate their talents. We have had the privilege of working with some amazing Artists… Our aspiration is inclusion. Our members (as) equals within their society. Opportunities to be admired and respected. Working with these artists allowed this to happen…we saw the Town Centre come to life with creative spaces ” – Buzzhub St Helens CDP

“It was wonderful to be welcomed into a town and space I would likely otherwise never have worked in before. I learned about the energy you find in small towns, breaking down that assumption that creativity isn’t worth bringing to a small town because nobody is interested in it. The project proved resoundingly that isn’t true, and furthermore proved how a little care, attention and effort can bring life and energy to even the smallest places.”

Check out @artistledsthelens on Instagram and Facebook for posts made during the project.

Artist-led in St Helens Creative Activity in empty shops was receiving up to £24,500 of funding from the England European Regional Development Fund, specifically the Welcome Back Fund, as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (and in London the intermediate body Greater London Authority) is the Managing Authority for European Regional Development Fund. Established by the European Union, the European Regional Development Fund helps local areas stimulate their economic development by investing in projects which will support innovation, businesses, create jobs and local community regenerations. For more information visit https://www.gov.uk/european-growth-funding.

When paths cross/Wenn sich wege kreuzen

| Claire

A short residency in Stuttgart in April 2018, invited by Yellow Door Artists has resulted in an exhibition opening this weekend at the Rathaus in Stuttgart to celebrate the 70th anniversary of St Helens and Stuttgart’s town twinning.  I’ll be showing two pairs of photographs from the performances of What are you waiting for? that took place outside Bibliothek in Stuttgart in April and from Thatto Heath Library in St Helens in October.

When paths cross/Wenn sich wege kreuzen
Rathaus Galerie, Stuttgart
Germany
19th November – 14th December 2018.
An invitation to the opening of our twin town exhibition on Friday 16th November 2018 at 6pm, Rathaus Stuttgart, 4th floor, Marktplatz 1, 70173.
Welcome speech by Nadia Vom Schiedt: Director of the Department of International Relations, followed by an introduction talk by Vivien Sigmund: Art Historian MA.
This exhibition takes place in the context of the 70 year partnership between Stuttgart and St Helens and the 30 year partnership with Lodz. It showcases 4 artists from St Helens, 1 from Lodz and 4 Stuttgart artists, who have all undertaken artist exchanges between the towns.

Exhibiting artists:
Naoise Johnson-Martin, Rhyannon Parry, Rebecca Ainsworth, Claire Weetman, Ellen Rein, NAF (Nana Hühewig and Fender Schrade), Monika Drache, Magdalena Kowalczyk

Opening Times: Monday to Friday 10am – 6pm, Free Entry.
Duration of Exhibition: 19 November until 14 December.

Artist Books in the Autumn. Stuttgart/Yokohama/Manchester

| Claire

This autumn the three editions of Aridane’s thread will be joining a host other artist-book makers from around the world in three exhibitions.

Seiten | Räume
an artist-book project

// opening 12.9.2018 // Württembergische Kunstverein, Stuttgart

Linienscharen is a platform for contemporary drawing, which was founded in Stuttgart. Linienscharen have invited artists to submit a book project in the spirit of an artist’s book, which is to be exhibited at various locations that are not typical visual arts venues. A piece of furniture will be built that will present the submitted books in unison, allowing the audience the freedom to explore and leaf through the varied books. There will be an event for the opening at each location that focuses on inherent or additional aspects of the topic. After a week or two, the furniture will move on to another location, including the Graphothek at Stuttgart Bibliothek and the Stuttgarter Schriftstellerhaus (writer’s house)

Promoted by the city of Stuttgart

Reading Between The Lines:
Tokyo/Yokohama and St. Helens Artists’ Books and Zine

21 September – 1 October 2018.
Launchpad Gallery, Yokohama

Turning the Page: Manchester – Yokohama

29 September – 3 November 2018
Private View: Thursday 27 September 2018, 6-9pm
Paper Gallery, Manchester

Established in 2012 in the Tokyo/Yokohama area, Art Byte Critique responds to a desire for a community of artists interested in sharing ideas and feedback about their studio process.

Since 2014, Art Byte Critique artists have been exploring various modes of expression through artists’ books and zines. At the same time, Art Byte Critique established a connection with artists in St. Helens, England through artist Joan Birkett with the intent to develop relationships and collaborations.

This connection has happily borne fruit in 2018. Art Byte Critique artists and St. Helens artists organized a collaborative exhibition of artists’ books and zines at the Eccleston Community Library in St. Helens and the World of Glass in St. Helens this past spring. These works will tour to Paper Gallery in Manchester under the title “Turning the Page” from September 29 – November 3, 2018.

“Reading Between the Lines” at Launch Pad Gallery in Yokohama is the first collaborative artists’ books and zines exhibition for Art Byte Critique and the St. Helens artists in Japan. This exhibition will feature recent works and new works created by a number of artists for this exhibition. In the spirit of bookmaking and collaboration, “Reading Between the Lines” will be hosting a series of workshops and events by the artists. We want to give visitors a chance to learn more about bookmaking and try their hand at bookmaking.
Participating Artists:

Jane Barwood, Joan Birkett, Paul Cousins Deanna Gabiga Arthur Huang Patty Hudak Mariko Jesse Yuko Kamei A.J. Malone Jeni McConnell Carol Miller Julia Nascimento Lyle Nisenholz Mia O Lori Ono Jacqui Priestley Louise Rouse Yvonne Tinsley Claire Weetman Nick West

Interval 1.1, Ordsall Hall, Salford

| Claire

My work ‘What are you waiting for’ will be exhibited again from February at Ordsall Hall in Salford as part of the next iteration of Markmakers’ exhibition ‘Interval’.

Interval 1.1

Opens Sunday 11 February 2018, 2-3.30pm
Exhibition continues to 13 May 2018.

Ordsall Hall, 322 Ordsall Lane, Salford, M5 3AN
Open Monday – Thursday 10am-4pm, Sundays 1-4pm

What is an interval?
Is it just blank space?
Is there anything of interest in the gaps?

As a group of artists, ‘Markmakers’ come together to explore common themes through each artist’s individual contemporary art practice. Over the past year their theme has been interval. What is an interval? Is it just a blank space? Is there anything of interest in the gaps?

The exhibition will include new work directly inspired by Ordsall Hall with some interventions in other areas of the Hall.

Have a break, visit interval.

Getting there:

Car Parking: Please note that car park charges apply during the Hall’s opening hours (Monday – Thursday 10am – 4pm and Sunday 1 – 4pm). Costs are £2 for up to 3 hours and £6 for over 3 hours.

Tram:The Hall is very close to the Exchange Quay Metrolink Station on the MediaCity UK / Eccles line.

Bus:Any bus to Salford Quays on the A5063 stops on Trafford Road (the Copthorne Hotel) leaving a short walk to the Hall.