Amanda Loomes
Amanda Loomes worked as a civil engineer before doing a Foundation Course, and going on to study art at Chelsea and the Royal College of Art.
At this point, I’d started to advance in my civil engineering career; I was a senior engineer and then a project manager, and running some big sites. The last thing I built was the Sainsburys at New Cross Gate. When I finally handed in my notice in order to take an art foundation course, everyone was totally mystified. It was quite traumatic for a while and a test of resolve. She did a painting degree and MA but made films and installations, and now her art practice is a form of socially engaged portraiture and involves filming people in their place of work.
Focusing on people who make a mark which has to be repeated and people who are often overlooked or unseen, I question my role as an artist and consider my anxieties with regard to usefulness and sense of purpose. Running alongside this practice and interweaved with it are my face painting images and films. Made with the same spirit of curiosity and questioning my role and responsibility towards the other, I literally reach through the camera to touch the subject of this exchange.
Celebrating the everyday whilst simultaneously providing an antidote to it, the work oscillates between exposure and obliteration. Although concentrated on the surface my practice stems from a need to be involved and a fascination with the Protestant work ethic and the commitment and motivation required to work.
Projects in recent years include Close Knit (2021/22), when Amanda, artist Alison Carlier and animator Sheryl Jenkins worked with Museums Northumberland Bait; Civil (2021), a film made for The London Group exhibition In Plain Sight at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery in Honiton; Combine (2020), a film for the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art programme Triple Harvest; The Custody Code commissioned by Forestry England. Amanda is President of The London Group of artists
At this point, I’d started to advance in my civil engineering career; I was a senior engineer and then a project manager, and running some big sites. The last thing I built was the Sainsburys at New Cross Gate. When I finally handed in my notice in order to take an art foundation course, everyone was totally mystified. It was quite traumatic for a while and a test of resolve. She did a painting degree and MA but made films and installations, and now her art practice is a form of socially engaged portraiture and involves filming people in their place of work.
Focusing on people who make a mark which has to be repeated and people who are often overlooked or unseen, I question my role as an artist and consider my anxieties with regard to usefulness and sense of purpose. Running alongside this practice and interweaved with it are my face painting images and films. Made with the same spirit of curiosity and questioning my role and responsibility towards the other, I literally reach through the camera to touch the subject of this exchange.
Celebrating the everyday whilst simultaneously providing an antidote to it, the work oscillates between exposure and obliteration. Although concentrated on the surface my practice stems from a need to be involved and a fascination with the Protestant work ethic and the commitment and motivation required to work.
Projects in recent years include Close Knit (2021/22), when Amanda, artist Alison Carlier and animator Sheryl Jenkins worked with Museums Northumberland Bait; Civil (2021), a film made for The London Group exhibition In Plain Sight at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery in Honiton; Combine (2020), a film for the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art programme Triple Harvest; The Custody Code commissioned by Forestry England. Amanda is President of The London Group of artists
Still from film Combine, 2020, Fermynwoods Contemporary Art
Irene Perez Hernandez
Irene studied in her native Spain before gaining an Erasmus Grant for an exchange programme at Middlesex University, and going on to study for an MFA Fine Art, Goldsmiths, University of London. She is a sculptor, working in a wide range of media, seeking to redefine the relationship between sculpture and object, and challenge the conventions associated with the discipline.
My enduring subject is the status of the commodity in late-capitalist cultural expression. As commodity-culture transmutes all objects and relations into exchangeable units of value, I try to parody the process, frequently positioning simple, seemingly-mundane objects in situations alternately poignant and absurd.
Prior to her residency in Bury St Edmunds, Irene became fascinated by the ruins of the Benedictine Abbey, particularly the arched frame in the surviving section of the north transept. The centrality of geometry to the construction of medieval European houses of workshop provides an appropriate starting point and link to Irene's ongoing work.
Recent residences include the Guest Studio of Cologne Culture Department. Cologne, Germany in 2019 and Artist in Residence at Taubenturm, Diessen am Ammersee, Germany in 2018. For further details see https://ireneperezhernandez.com
My enduring subject is the status of the commodity in late-capitalist cultural expression. As commodity-culture transmutes all objects and relations into exchangeable units of value, I try to parody the process, frequently positioning simple, seemingly-mundane objects in situations alternately poignant and absurd.
Prior to her residency in Bury St Edmunds, Irene became fascinated by the ruins of the Benedictine Abbey, particularly the arched frame in the surviving section of the north transept. The centrality of geometry to the construction of medieval European houses of workshop provides an appropriate starting point and link to Irene's ongoing work.
Recent residences include the Guest Studio of Cologne Culture Department. Cologne, Germany in 2019 and Artist in Residence at Taubenturm, Diessen am Ammersee, Germany in 2018. For further details see https://ireneperezhernandez.com
Installation view detail, Clock Hook series, 2019, at the Global Forest Artist in Residence, Black Forest, Germany. Carved lime wood and stop motion video.
Julia Manheim
Through a distinguished career, Julia's work has encompassed contemporary jewellery, public art projects, sculpture, installation and video. However, these iterations are united by her fine observation - often focusing on seemingly mundane everyday details - an interest in diverse materials and stunning use of colour. Recent work has centred on making short films, which she sometimes performs in, for example, Pearl’s Oranges (2018). Warm Up (2017), observes and compares the facial expressions and gestures of three singers warming up their voices. make/unmake/remake (2019), is a semi-documentary of sculptor Rod Bugg working in his studio.
For grove, I want to take the opportunity to develop a strand of my practice which has been there all along, but has only surfaced intermittently in the form of actual pieces of work. It involves walking, finding objects and documenting them, as made manifest in 'Secret River', an artist’s book published in 2000, as the culmination of a Thames Path Residency. This was also the basis for 'Found Out', a solo exhibition of photo-copied found objects at m2 Gallery, London, in 2018.
The desire to make a ‘nature table’ display of my finds is very strong, I pick up small things on my walks and then arrange them on a surface. I look, draw, photograph and photo-copy them. The grove residency will give me time to walk and collect around Bury St. Edmunds and further what I do with the objects I find.
For further details see www.quay2c.com/index.php/Q2Cconnections/quayworkers/julia_manheim and www.quay2c.com/index.php/m2/detail/julia_manheim1
For grove, I want to take the opportunity to develop a strand of my practice which has been there all along, but has only surfaced intermittently in the form of actual pieces of work. It involves walking, finding objects and documenting them, as made manifest in 'Secret River', an artist’s book published in 2000, as the culmination of a Thames Path Residency. This was also the basis for 'Found Out', a solo exhibition of photo-copied found objects at m2 Gallery, London, in 2018.
The desire to make a ‘nature table’ display of my finds is very strong, I pick up small things on my walks and then arrange them on a surface. I look, draw, photograph and photo-copy them. The grove residency will give me time to walk and collect around Bury St. Edmunds and further what I do with the objects I find.
For further details see www.quay2c.com/index.php/Q2Cconnections/quayworkers/julia_manheim and www.quay2c.com/index.php/m2/detail/julia_manheim1
