Natália Pavlovičová: As an artist originally from Slovakia, my practice is largely shaped by the experience of settling in the UK and finding ways of belonging. I’m dealing with topics, such as identity negotiation, vulnerability, resilience and security, mainly through installation and performance. During this residency, I’m experimenting with assemblage, specifically looking at borders, divisions of spaces, and how they work as instigators of (un)safety.
Tom Hopson: I draw bizarre and disturbed characters in equally bizarre and disturbed surroundings. I make things up as I go along because I am simply too impatient to plan things out ahead of time and work on defined projects long term. The more technically skilled I become at something, the less fun I have doing it and the less interesting the things I make are. Maybe one day I will complete a big project without jumping ship partway through, but for now I am content to chase shiny things.
Julia Halasy is a student at the London College of Communication, with a research–based practice focusing on ideals of how technology can be used through an intentional, holistic approach. This often borns itself in ranging mediums, such as 3D design, sound-making and creative coding.
Sofya Rakitina is a multidisciplinary graphic designer and a student at Central Saint Martins. Her practice focuses on community making through online spaces. She specialises in creating digital environments, games, and interactive experiences through combining web-based graphics and physical media.
For the Transformative Futures residency, Halasy and Rakitina will focus on building their collective practice by engaging in networks and their discontents through pattern play and recognition in tech and nature. Through this communing, they strive to explore how networks emerge on the internet, as well as its predecessors in nature, moss and spore growth.
Mayu Greenaway-Harvey is a multidisciplinary designer whose current practice centres on language and communication. Mayu uses mixed media such as painting, photography and poetry to explore multilingual relationships between nature, materials and the built environment. During the residency, notions of linguistic fluidity are explored using micro and macroscopic lenses to draw insights into interactions from varying perspectives. This aims to reframe everyday objects, words and concepts. It has also given rise to the application of innovative techniques utilising metals and ceramics.
Maya Barter is a multidisciplinary artist and designer. Experimentation is a vital element of her creative process as the materials she uses inform the themes of her work. She works with a multitude of analogue and digital mediums, including embroidery, projection mapping and photography. During her residency at Camden Art Centre she has been working with textiles, cyanotype printing and recycled materials to explore narratives of memory, heirlooms and found family.
María Mediodía Sorgorb is a multidisciplinary artist and designer, born in Madrid and currently based in London. Through her work, which blends oil painting and drawing with various experimental techniques, María explores her inner world, expressing her experiences, emotions, insecurities, frustrations, and beliefs. Her artistic practice is enriched by her experience in interior and product design, giving her pieces special attention to materials, textures, and colours, using art as a means to express her sensitivity and curiosity.