Soft Impressions: Helen Cammock, Ingrid Pollard and Camara Taylor
a-n members Helen Cammock and Ingrid Pollard show alongside Camara Taylor in this inter-generational group exhibition that focuses on the artists’ printmaking practices, and reflects on the historic role of printmaking as a tool of political activism and propaganda.
Pollard’s contribution includes a series of blind embossings titled Seventeen of Sixty-Eight. Made without ink, they present impressions on white paper of historic racist insignia collected from pubs across the UK.
Meanwhile, new prints made in Dundee Contemporary Art Print Studio by Cammock include responses to the life and work of Scottish mill worker and activist Mary Brooksbank, and that of African-American abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass, who gave speeches in Dundee and neighbouring towns in the 1840s.
7 December 2024 – 23 March 2025, Dundee Contemporary Arts dca.org.uk
Crossing the Park
Northern Ireland-based a-n member Michael Hanna explores ideas of allegiance, tribalism, empathy and identity, in this exhibition that reflects the three year process he has undertaken to try to transfer his fandom from Everton Football Club to their local rivals, Liverpool.
Hanna has employed tactics such as using red body paint when Liverpool play, dressing his newly born child in a Liverpool kit and eating the same match-day meal as Liverpool’s goalkeeper.
The exhibition includes filmed conversations between the artist and a psychologist about group behaviour and how to change, and also with Liverpool taxi drivers, discussing friends, family and football fandom.
Until 21 December 2024, Centre for Contemporary Art Derry~Londonderry ccadld.org
Conglomerates
A group exhibition exploring ideas of care and kinship between human and non-human beings, featuring film, sculpture and textile works by Paola Bascón, Rhiannon Hunter, Rona Lee, Hannah Morgan, Davinia-Ann Robinson and Sam Williams.
a-n member Williams’ contribution includes fragments of their ongoing project Deep in The Eye and The Belly, consisting of a film, photographic works and an etching.
As Williams explains: “Deep in The Eye and The Belly entwines stories of cetacean bodies with imagined oceanic futures in which these bodies become shelter for humans who returned to the oceans in the wake of climate collapse.”
A free screening of Williams’ film also takes place on 29 November at Strand Building, London.
5 December 2024 – 3 January 2025, Hypha Studios, London hyphastudios.com
Mary Griffiths: Everything and All of Us
a-n member Mary Griffiths’ first major retrospective exhibition brings together artworks from the last 10 years and features a new site-specific wall drawing, alongside artworks from the University of Leeds’ Special Collections, including pieces by Barbara Hepworth and Bridget Riley.
Griffiths’ practice is rooted in geometric abstraction and shaped by collaborations across literature, science and music, drawing on ideas from the microscopic to the cosmic, the physical and philosophical. The artist’s labour-intensive process involves applying layers of graphite, then polishing and cutting linear forms into the accumulated surface, which she likens to obsidian in its deep, shining blackness.
Wall drawing Prophet reflects on her ongoing conversation about memoir and place with Tony Crowley, Professor of English Language at Leeds University, who shares Griffiths’ working-class Merseyside background, and her interest in the representation of childhood experiences.
Until 8 March 2025, The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds library.leeds.ac.uk
Beep Painting Biennial 2024: I won’t stay in a world without love
Numerous a-n members are among the 340 artists taking part in Beep Painting Biennial, which this year invited submissions on the musical theme ‘I won’t stay in a world without love’ – a lyric taken from a discarded Beatles song. Powys-based a-n member Susan Adams was joint winner of the main Biennial prize, which includes £1,500 and a solo exhibition at Elysium Gallery, Swansea.
Adams’ winning submission included the sculptural work Take me out of this place, which features oil paintings on a free-standing structure made of wooden drawers. The work was inspired by a now derelict hospital in mid-Wales, formerly known as Brecon and Radnor Asylum.
Adams explains: “I imagine most who entered the arched doorway – reflected in the arrangement of painted drawers – found the experience terrifying, and opportunities rare for privacy, perhaps within small spaces, like a few drawers allocated for personal possessions.”
Until 21 December 2024, Elysium Gallery, Swansea elysiumgallery.com
Las Gemelas: Arrival (a lexicon of unmaking)
a-n Board member Sonia Boué and artist Ashokkumar D Mistry collaborate as Las Gemelas (meaning The Twins), on this exhibition that draws on histories of forced migration and archival materials relating to the Spanish Civil War.
The personal experiences of the artists intersect with a moment in Southampton’s history, when 4,000 Basque child refugees arrived to the city in 1937. Boué’s father was a political exile from the Spanish Civil War, while Mistry’s family fled the tumultuous final days of Empire.
The exhibition includes Mistry’s tent-like fabric structures that hang overhead, welcoming visitors and reimagining the refugees’ arrival, while Boué’s sculptural installation of one hundred colourful wool pom-poms is inspired by the fringing of a Spanish souvenir tambourine.
Until 11 January 2025, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton jhg.art
Zarah Hussain: Paradise Carpet
This solo exhibition by a-n Board member Zarah Hussain features an immersive light projection of changing patterns inspired by Islamic art, alongside a series of colourful wall sculptures, bold paintings and a large-scale light mural.
Hussain’s practice fuses geometry, spirituality and technology. She draws on personal experiences and research into global textiles, alongside a fascination with the ways in which Islamic art has shaped and absorbed global ideas and practices.
Paradise Carpet offers a continually changing visual experience while inviting visitors to use the installation as a space for reflection, connection and community. Visitors can walk, sit, pray or meditate on the digitally woven ‘carpet’, as ambient sounds fill the space.
Until 22 February 2025, The Art House, Wakefield the-arthouse.org.uk
Top image: Michael Hanna, Team representing Liverpool, part of Crossing the Park
