Behind the Spaces: Disrupting the Frame - a-n The Artists Information Company

Venue: The Mill Gallery
Starts: Friday, April 4, 2025
Ends: Friday, May 2, 2025
Address: Unit 5 Cardinal House, Swinnow Grange Mills, Leeds. LS13 4EP
Location: Yorkshire
Organiser: The Mill Gallery

Art that breaks boundaries, challenges norms, and reclaims space—Behind the Spaces is an exhibition like no other! Running from 4th April to 2nd May, this powerful showcase highlights the work of Sarah Francis and Lucy Fiona Morrison, two trailblazing artists who create while shaping the artistic communities around them.

Artist-led spaces thrive on disruption, and Francis and Morrison bring this same radical energy to their own work. Francis uses assemblage, sculpture, and photography to explore agency, consent, and the intersection of queer and disabled bodies with memory, land, and self. Morrison pushes past the canvas, crafting sculptural paintings that reject perfection and embrace tension. Their work embodies themes of displacement, resistance, and reconstruction—mirroring the dual role of artists who make space for others while fighting for their own.

This isn’t just an exhibition—it’s a statement. Behind the Spaces challenges what is fixed, reclaims what is lost, and makes visible what is too often overlooked.

Want to go deeper? Meet the artists on Friday 4th April from 1 PM to 6 PM! Get an insider’s look at their process, ask questions, and explore the ideas behind their work.

Sarah Francis

Artist Curator Sarah Francis is a Leeds based Artist Curator who focuses on bringing under-recognised artists and narratives to the public, using empathy and warmth to build self-confidence in creatives left behind by the mainstream system. Fascinated by complex possibilities lying dormant in ‘familiar’ environments, setting a challenging dialogue between cultural identity and the inner worlds which we as artists manifest within our work. This conceptual framework draws parallels between artists from differing socio-cultural worlds, whose work follows similar lines in metaphysical realms. Francis' interpretation of the curator is that of a caretaker of other worlds, working in collaboration as the tour guide and storyteller, bringing these converging manifestations to our physical spaces. Francis’ artwork centres around her neurodiverse and queer identity, building her own language and worlds to explore and understand ‘how I made me’; a reference to an early body of work that investigated her inner trauma and re-articulation of her current self. Her work has been shortlisted for the Saatchi Gallery’s Art of Giving Prize, selected by Richard Billingham for Curator’s Choice Noise Young Talent 2009, and recognised in Aesthetica’s 100 Best Contemporary Artists in Europe. In addition to her work, Sarah Francis is the Founder and Director of Aire Place Studios, Leeds. @sarahfrancis.art & @aireplacestudios

Aire Place Studios CIC

Aire Place Studios is a creative studio which holds spaces of equality and solidarity. We host comfortable studios spaces, hold safer spaces for workshops and a bold gallery space centred around innovation and inclusivity. Aire Place Studios also features a collective of associated artists who exist to radically uplift under-represented creatives with empathy and warmth to realise the potential of those often overlooked by traditional art institutions. This dynamic collaboration builds trust and collective accountability to serve our communities.