Nqatyiswa Mendu
Nqatyiswa (also known as Nikki) Mendu (b. Durban, South Africa) lives and works in London. She holds an MA in Development Studies from the University of Sussex and an Honours degree in Business Science from the University of Cape Town. As a facilitator, social change practitioner and communications expert, Nikki is passionate about the role of creative methodologies, transdisciplinarity, and dialogue in social change. Her work emphasises participatory practices, co-creation and enquiry, with particular focus on the environment, human rights, health and gender. Her artistic journey in London has included working with Camden Art Centre, Arts Admin and the Barbican. She is currently a member of art studio Invisible Flock as Engagement and Communications Coordinator for Land Body Ecologies, a Wellcome-funded network exploring environmental change impacts on mental health.
Maddie Exton
“I’m a conceptual artist interested in history, philosophy and politics. My work focuses on examining life, to highlight poetics and connections. I work across various mediums, including sculpture, film, drawing, and stone carving.
My creative process often starts with research or social engagement, which can evolve into workshops, group discussions, lectures, or site-specific performances. Whether it’s burning Bible quotes into toast, interviewing a psychic medium, or carving bricks, I’m interested in creative ways to engage with complex ideas.
Alongside my art practice I work in organising, learning and curating. I work as a freelance facilitator and Creative Producer for an Arts Council Action/Research project, empowering rural communities to shape the arts where they live. I am excited by alternative arts education, non-traditional routes and co-creation – my upbringing in rural Suffolk, being working class and the first member of my family to attend university has a big impact on how I work, and exploring these challenges is important to me. My facilitation has been shaped by various alternative artist development paths, including Chisenhale Studio’s Into The Wild programme and my time as Chair of OUTPOST steering committee, a DIY volunteer-run gallery and studios.”
Jack O’Brien (b.1993) lives and works in London and is represented by Ginny on Frederick. Recent solo and duo exhibitions include: The Answer, Sans Titre Invites, Paris, FR (2023); To More Time, Lockup International, London, UK (2022); The Influence of Emotions On Associated Reactions, with Henryk Morel (1937-68), Polamagnetczne Gallery, Warsaw, PL (2022) and Waiting For The Sun To Kill Me, Ginny on Frederick, London, UK (2021). Recent group exhibitions include: Support Structures, Gathering, London, UK (2023); Memory of Rib, N/A Gallery, Seoul, KR (2022); Chômage Technique, Lovaas Projects, Munich, DE (2022); Something is Burning, Kunsthalle Bratislava, SK (2022); An Insular Rococo, Hollybush Gardens, London, UK (2022) and Strange Messengers, Peres Projects, Berlin, DE (2018).
ree bradley (b. 1991) works with forms of staged documentary and socially engaged performance to produce single channel films and multi-channel installations. He creates educational paradigms, exploring the performative tensions at play in processes of collective learning and rehearsing for future scenarios. Collaborating with different practitioners, he works within existing institutions as well as brings people together in staged architectural worlds, building temporary microcosms where new relationships can emerge.
bradley has undertaken residencies and exhibitions with Gasworks, London; ICA, London; BBC, UK; HALLE14, Centre for Contemporary Art, Leipzig; Fondazione Prada, Venice; Jerwood Arts, London; The Room Projects, Paris, and LUX, London; Kasseler DokFest, Kassel; PS2, Belfast, among many others.
Gregg Bordowitz is a renowned filmmaker, writer, and activist whose work has been exhibited at the Whitney, the New Museum, Artist Space, MoMA (all New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and Tate Modern, among others. A major retrospective of his work, Gregg Bordowitz: I Wanna Be Well, was organised by the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, in 2018 and subsequently presented at MoMA PS1 and the Art Institute of Chicago.
In the 1980s, his creative practice was focused on responding to the AIDS crisis. He organised and documented a number of protests against government inaction and advocated for health education and harm reduction as a member of the groundbreaking AIDS activist group ACT UP. He also served as a founding member of the 1980s video/film collectives Testing the Limits and Diva TV.
Bordowitz is the author of The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings, 1986–2003 (2004), General Idea: Imagevirus (2010), Volition (2010), and Glenn Ligon: Untitled (I Am a Man) (2018).
Ain Bailey is a composer, artist and DJ. She facilitates workshops considering the role of sound in the formation of identity, and the exploration of memory and sound. Recent exhibitions include ‘And We’ll Always Be A Disco In The Glow Of Love’, Cubitt Gallery, London (2019); ‘Version’, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2021); ‘Atlantic Railton’ which was part of the ‘Listening To The City’ sound installation programme in the 2021 Serpentine Pavilion; ‘Untitled: Our Wedding’ for the ‘Black Melancholia’ exhibition at CCS Bard (2022), New York, USA and ‘Trioesque’ for Bruckenmusik 27 in Cologne, Germany,(2022). In 2020 Bailey and Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski created a composition and print entitled ‘Remember To Exhale’ for Studio Voltaire, London. She was the 2022-23 Cavendish Arts Science Fellow at Girton College, University of Cambridge. In 2023, Bailey was commissioned by FACT Liverpool for the ‘Resolution’ research project, which resulted in the exhibition ‘Four’ (2024). The exhibition is a response to time spent working with incarcerated men and their families on the subject of sound and memory.
Eva Jonas is a London-based visual artist and educator. Her practice invites viewers to reflect on our relationship with the natural world, recording where the body mediates how we experience, preserve, and perform within landscapes. Her projects lean on the processes of collecting and publishing. They are often informed by sculptural pieces and research ephemera, such as visual guides for creative crafts and outdoor activities. She draws on these instructional images to consider the extent to which engagement with the natural world is taught versus innate. Eva is currently co-facilitating Peer Matters, an artist development programme supported by Photoworks. Recent exhibitions include The Natural, Rural and Remote and accompanying workshop, Garden Recordings at Serchia Gallery, Bristol in July 2023, and a group show with (re)structure as part of Brighton Photo Fringe in October 2022. Eva’s first book Let’s Sketch the Lay of the Land was published in October 2020 by September Books.
dove / Christine Kirubi is an artist-poet-collaborator based in London. Her debut poetry collection WILDPLASSEN was published by the87press this year. Recent projects and performances include The Archive is a Gathering Place at Tate Britain in collaboration with Rhoda Boateng, The Blue House co-founded with Daniel Baker-Wells, and a collaborative improvisation at Décalé with petals Kalulé. Recent commissioned texts include Fabulous Musics published in response to Shenece Oretha’s UAL 20/20 commission with Hepworth Wakefield and a note on audrey mbugua’s dog published in the Jerwood Survey III catalogue in response to Ebun Sodipo’s work.
