Ruth Claxton lives and works in Birmingham. Claxton has shown widely in the UK and internationally including solo shows at Site Santa FE (USA), Spike Island (Bristol, UK) and Ikon Gallery (UK).  Other shows and projects include The Unseen, Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum of Contemporary Art (China), Synthetic Worlds (Two Women) a permanent commission for the Grundy Gallery, Blackpool supported by the Contemporary Art Society, Postcards Nottingham Contemporary (UK), House of Beasts, Attingham Park (UK), Undone Henry Moore Institute (Leeds, UK), Remake, Remodel (National Glass Centre, Sunderland UK), Wonders of Weston, Weston Supermare commissioned by Situations and Field Art Projects, The Figurine Dialogue, Crystal Palace, (Stockholm, Sweden) and Known Unknowns, Gallery Loop (Seoul, Korea). She is Associate director of Eastside Projects, a public gallery in Birmingham which is being imagined and organised by artists. Her work is in various public and private collections including the Arts Council Collection.

Born 1978 Oldham, Rachel Goodyear lives and works in Manchester and Salford. Graduated from BA Fine Art Leeds Metropolitan University (2000).

Throughout her practice Goodyear presents timeless, uncanny scenes which toe the line between beauty and terror. Recurring motifs appear both strange and familiar, a contemporary play on the traditions of twentieth Century Surrealism and psychoanalysis. She often describes her images as 'fragments', like fleeting thoughts or visions that fluctuate between the real and the imagined. Working predominantly with pencil on paper, Goodyear treats the surface as a threshold, like a permeable membrane, through which the imagined space can slip off the page into hand-drawn animations, cut-outs and installation. 

Selected solo exhibitions include Limina, York Mediale and York Museums Trust Human Nature commission, York Art Gallery (2020); Catching Sight, The New Art Gallery, Walsall (2017); Approaching the Surface, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London (2016); Restless Guests, The Drawing Center, New York (2015); and Modifications of the Host, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield (2011). Selected group exhibitions include The Way We Are 2.0, Weserburg Museum of Modern Art, Bremen (2020); A Trick of the Light, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool (2019); The Innsbruck International Biennale of the Arts, Innsbruck (2016); Telling Tales, The Freud Museum, London (2016); The Curitiba Biennale, Brazil (2013); Drawing Stories, Museum Folkwang, Essen (2012); and Made Up, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool Biennial (2008)

Residencies include The Banff Centre, Alberta (2010).

 

Ilana Halperin (b. 1973, New York) lives and works in Glasgow. She received her MFA from Glasgow School of Art; Glasgow, Scotland in 2000 and her BA from Brown University; Providence, RI in 1995. Her work has featured in solo exhibitions worldwide including National Museum of Scotland, Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité and Artists Space in New York. Halperin’s creative output focuses upon geological activity and phenomena in an engagement with our understanding of time. The artist’s oeuvre combines geology and fieldwork in diverse locations: Hawaii, Iceland, France, Japan and in museums, archives and laboratories with an active studio-based practice. Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions including Estratos curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, PAC Murcia, Spain; Volcano at Compton Verney; Polar Dispatches at the Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME; the Sharjah Biennial 8 and Experimental Geography, ICI, curated by Nato Thompson. Halperin is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Inaugural Artist Fellowship at National Museums Scotland, a British Council Darwin Now Award and an Alchemy Fellowship at the Manchester Museum. She has undertaken artist residencies at the Camden Arts Centre, Cove Park and aboard the Professor Molchanov, an ecotourism vessel that travels into the far North. Halperin is the Artist-Curator of the geology collection for the new Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery, in the birthplace of Charles Darwin.  

Alex Pearl (b. 1968, Manchester, UK) lives and works in Ipswich. He earned a BA Hons, Fine Art, Birmingham Polytechnic (First) and an MA History of Art & Design UCE Birmingham, (distinction). A true renaissance man, Alex Pearl makes: mini epic films, video installations, games, photographs, sculpture, blogs and books. Throughout his practice there is a sense of an acceptance of failure and disappointment as important parts of the human condition. His recent commission for the Whitstable Biennale was based on a mistake and, lately, he has been unsuccessful in his Arts Council funding application to slaughter a large number of rival artists. Selected residencies include: Art as a Full Time Hobby, Aid & Abet, Cambridge (2011); Pearlville, Production Residency for, Unspooling – artists and cinema, Cornerhouse, Manchester (curated by Andrew Bracey & Dave Griffiths) (2010); and Production residency BCA gallery, Bedford (2009). Selected solo exhibitions include: Mothra vs Godzilla, Canal Project Space, London (2014); Let’s Go!, Fishmarket Gallery, Northampton (2012); The Incredible Shrinking Man, Tap Gallery Southend (2010); Goodbye to most of the Daydreams, BCA Gallery, Bedford & ICIA, University of Bath (2009). Selected groups shows include: S1 Salon, S1 Artspace, Sheffield (2012); Beyond Belonging, 12th GOEAST – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film, Wiesbaden, Germany (2012); commision for the Whitstable Biennale, Whitstable (2010); Unspooling – artists and cinema, Cornerhouse, Manchester (curated by Andrew Bracey & Dave Griffiths, (2010); Trying to cope with things that aren’t human, DCP, San Francisco, Airspace, Stoke on Trent, & Cell project space, London. curated by Ian Brown, (2009); and Drawing Links, The Drawing Room, London & Outpost, Norwich. www.alexpearl.co.uk