Issue 1: The Submitters
A word from our founder... After Illusion has, so far, been a whirlwind journey of wonder! The residency opportunity was set up amid lockdown, when artists and creatives had to rethink their approach to making, shifting to work from home or online, losing their ever-important ‘creation space’. It was this experience of my own, as a practising artist suddenly without a studio, that After Illusion was born from. Our 2-week long residencies take place via our Instagram platform, within which we encourage complete freedom and individuality. There are no constraints on the resident, they can use the platform in whatever way they feel is best suited to themselves. I wanted to create a platform that was free from instruction and pressure, that fostered all forms of creativity and supported everyone’s works, alongside an online presence that could act as a database of many different creatives that take up residence! It is with this in mind that we have decided to put this zine, our first zine, together. With over 50 initial submissions, we have seen a huge amount of interest in our opportunity—we simply cannot give everyone a residency! To tackle this, as we still want to present all of our submitter's talents, this zine has been created to give every one of them a spotlight! We are excited to be able to share with you the talent of over 50 creatives!
Skye Williams (Founder & Head Curator)
Rachel Cottrell Cottrell is a multi-disciplinary designer specialising in Graphic design and Illustration. Her work often consists of themes related to current affairs to give exposure to important international issues.
Instagram : @rachelcottrelldesign rachelcottrell_@outlook.com
Rizqi Mattaqin Mattaqin is focused on developing light and colour in photography, exploring the perception of colour and its emotional rebounds.
warna.myportfolio.com rizki0716@gmail.com
Mpumelelo Buthelezi This photo series is about waste pickers who live in a neighbourhood called Dryhook Informal settlement, Phororo near Devland, Soweto. In South Africa it is estimated that 85,000 people make a living as waste collectors/recyclers. Waste pickers are people who collect and sort waste materials, and sell reusable and recyclable materials (such as paper, cardboard, plastic containers, glass, and metal) primarily in an informal capacity. In particular waste pickers contribute to higher levels of recycling within cities and towns, and help to divert waste from landfills.
Instagram: @ICreateImagesEveryday mpumi.buthelezi1@gmail.com
Isabelle Catucci An investigation of the processes of signification and appraisal of the soil-land-Earth concept in visual arts. Different languages and techniques, such as painting on tiles, installation of pieces modelled around a potter, glazed, compose with ground coal and with repetition of dystopias and different perceptions about the condition of the land, exploration or ecological issues. The works arise from debates and reflections on dystopian futures, contemporary imagination on the planet and earthly living conditions.
Instagram: @artcatucci www.isabellecatucci.wixsite.com/isabellecatucci/c-v/ artcatucci@gmail.com
Gordon H. Williams Through music creation as an artistic practice, Williams is studying human conditions with a focus on affect, perception, and relation. Community, communing and non-hierarchy are particularly important areas of research and guideposts for his work. With these forms, Williams attempts to realize other ways of being together.
www.gordonhwilliams.com gordonhwilliams@gmail.com
Sheryl Sahni These images are part of an ongoing project of Sahni’s Covid19 Journal, showing pictures taken before the pandemic and during quarantine to study the ideas of nostalgia versus present-ness, alongside how poetics of space come to play when we are confined to our homes. Sahni’s work and research touches upon different themes such as feminism and iconography in India, immigration trauma and the dynamics of public and private spaces.
Instagram: @sheryl.sahni sherylsahni@nyu.edu
James Hallinan The content of Hallinan’s work deals with the psychological effects of trauma on the human mind and body. The core themes deal with the impact of this physically and emotionally. Hallinan’s work examines this from the perspective of cause and effect, specifically looking at the impact of trauma on our engagement with society, his work strives to visually interpret this.
www.jameshallinan.com Instagram: @James_Hallinan jameshallinan@hotmail.com
Henny Woods Lockdown has forced Woods to take a step back to observes what her relationships with others look like from afar. Woods has explored this with a combination of recordings of re-enacted conversations, and videos of her socialising with friends and family.
Instagram: @grinnings0ul hennywoods@rocketmail.com
Melinda K.P. Stees Stees is a digital and fibre artist who has created an entirely I individualistic way of working. Initially, Stees created digital simulations of her knitting in order to help her envisage her way through,. As she experimented, she found that these simulations work as an artwork in their own right.
www.imageknits.com Instagram: @imageknits Image.knits.see@gmail.com
Ala Leresteux Inspired by philosophy, biology, chemistry and physics, Leresteux’s work borders magical realism, surrealism, aleatoric and oneiric art.
www.alaleresteux.com Instagram: @alaleresteux erizino@gmail.com
Feng Jiang The fundamental inspiration for Jiang’s work is love, its beauty and complexity, while thematically, his work revolves around questions of gender, sexuality, sex, and race. As an interdisciplinary artist, Jiang turn to the tools offered by multiple media to enrich and deepen his works. Jiang creates artwork as a process for healing and questioning. Setting out to disrupt, Jiang always wants to create something different from what people have seen before by challenging social norms and our perceptions of them. He is trying to gather energy to create a healing space for people who endure discrimination.
www.jiangfeng-mine.com Instagram: @JiangFeng_Mine Jiangfeng.mine@gmail.com
Rochelle Roberts Roberts’ poetry is often inspired by, or in response to, visual artworks and uses vivid, surreal imagery as a way to express inner feelings and emotions. Her non-fiction essays mostly focus on her personal relation to art, how art makes her feel, or comparing her own personal feelings and experiences to artworks.
www.rocheller.weebly.com Instagram: @rocheller
rochellewriter@outlook.com
Katie Taylor Taylor’s work explores our place in the world, the fragility of life and death and the precariousness of our existence, often using history and historical research as a basis of her work. Taylor works in a variety of media to create sculptural installations that explore the interface between materiality and memory, exploring how we are remembered beyond death by means of our possessions as well as the conceptual and emotional content of objects.
www.kmtaylor.co.uk katie@kmtaylor.co.uk
Kathrine Geoghegan Geoghegan’s work is concerned with the natural world, habitat and conservation issues. She paints native plants, and has a particular interest in their pollinators. What you see in the pieces is an insect'seye view of the world, as she likes to get down to earth level and paint these plants in their natural habitat.
www.kathrinegeoghegan.gallery kathrine@irishlandscape.ie
Benoit Maubrey Maubrey creates participative and interactive sound sculptures in public spaces. The public, local artists, musicians, choral groups and organisations can participate by relaying songs and messages via Bluetooth and individual Smartphones and expressing oneself “live" for 3 minutes , by connecting via a direct "line in� .
www.benoitmaubrey.com mail@benoitmaubrey.com
Bachittar Singh Instagram: @big_easy_art bassi.singh79945@yahoo.co.uk
One of Singh’s many key inspirations is a desire to depict ‘ordinary’ urban environments, such as the ones they grew up in. Singh feels they are universally recognisable; being the stage for most people’s every day. Thus, Singh strived to use architecture that was both mundane and extraordinary as their mise en scene in order to find unique and overlooked beauty.
Julie Clive Clive is a painter and installation artist, of an Abstract genre in nature. She aims to paint the unseen in nature, working on the micro to macro process. Clive intuitively mark makes, with a curiosity driven practice, her work having an indeterminate indeterminacy.
Jkukstudio64.weeblysite.com julescliveuk@yahoo.co.uk
Jane Walker Walker primarily works with lines, which she has recently been using to depict cities. Walker turns the cities upside-down, suspending them in a transparent manner that seemingly relates to landscape painting.
www.jane-walker.co.uk janewalker61@yahoo.co.uk
Szilvia Ponyiczki The main aspect of Ponyiczki’s work is the exploration of the personal and the collective unconscious through art. She works with the principles of dream analysis, being interested in and wanting to understand the ways of the unconscious takes one on a life-long journey of inquiry and learning.
www.ponyiczki.co.uk ponyiczki@hotmail.com
Graham Smillie Smillie is a documentary photographer who has recently been working on documenting roadside shrines. Alongside his documentation, Smillie explores and studies the recent and past history of those places, to achieve an understanding of their importance.
www.grahamsmillie.co.uk grahamsmillie@aol.com
Naroa Perez Perez’s work explores how the sense of touch can affect our Interpersonal relations and biological development. Perez’s practice is focused on looking at the sense of touch as the most important sense in human development and making wide research into science and philosophy, building together an open perspective around it.
www.naroaphoto.com naroa@naroaphoto.com
Kate Walters Walter’s work is an exploration of the expressive qualities of oil paint in conjunction with psychoanalytic process. Her paintings explore eroticism, mythology, creatureliness, and bodily trauma.
www.katewalters.co.uk K.walters@outlook.com
Yulia Shtern www.magicalzoo.com shterns@yahoo.com
Shtern’s sculptural series Magical Zoo, begun in 2016, places an emphasis on environmental preservation and sustainable artistic practices. Her works portray animal life, accenting the impact human activities have on it and are made of entirely upcycled materials.
Chris Kent Kent is an artist, illustrator and woodworker. His practice covers constructing wood sculptures incorporating text, drawing, collage, writing as well as creating graphic novels.
www.christopherwkent.com xyler2315@gmail.com
Simon Dredge Dredge is a contemporary abstract artist. His work tends to be very neon, exploring the use of texture and mixed mediums on canvas. Dredge experiments with acrylics, inks, pigment powder, gouache and many texture gels and medium. Texture and an element of 3D is vital.
Instagram: @simondredgeartist Simon.dredge@yahoo.com
Ana Lipps Lipps creates objects and installations that allow the audience, through participation, to explore the complexity of perspectives, the feeling of being trapped without one’s knowledge, as well as to envision alternative realities. In a broader sense, her artwork is about creating a bend in reality, through which participants can question their perspectives. Through creating interactive artwork, Lipps hopes to make the audience re-evaluate the nature of our core beliefs and values such as the feeling of displacement and apprehension of the unknown.
www.ana-lipps.com Ana.lipps@gmail.com
Ally Zlatar www.ally.pb.studio allyzlatar@gmail.com
Exploring art making as a methodology that suggests the human condition is more complex then it is currently understood, Zlatar examines, instigates and provokes notions of the individual experience through specifically focusing on philosophical discourse, body image, embodiment & ethics. Zlatar acknowledges there is power within the un-well body and believes there is tremendous value potency through examining these subjects through the contemporary art lens.
Becky Atherton Atherton’s work explores mythological representation of women and how stories have been influenced and reengineered by patriarchy. Specifically, how women have been written out of folklore and how stories have been changed to fit in with this ideology.
Instagram: @athertonbecky rebecca.atherton@btinternet.com
Norma Foulds Foulds makes multi media work, including collage, prints and sculpture. She has previously worked on community workshops making lanterns for parades, and costumes and props for dance groups.
www.normafoulds.wordpress.com normafoulds64@gmail.com
William Hughes How do we read memories? Hughes’ practice seeks to explore processes of memory and remembering, reflecting and drawing ideas from nostalgic material from his family. Working with multimedia processes, Hughes creates works of abstraction and suggestion set in spaces that trigger feelings of familiarity in the audience. The processes of abstract marking, texture built through layering, and its residual traces, aim to depict confusion and ambiguity.
www.hugheswilliam74.wixsite.com/mysite Instagram: @will.hughesss hugheswilliam74@gmail.com
COSMIC LAG COSMIC LAG is an ongoing multimedia project, containing multiple explorations of space-time, consciousness, and human brain function. Through the use visual metaphors, a metaverse is constructed - a (virtual or real) environment where two or more ideologies meet, blurring the lines between them. The meta allows for the viewer to be presented with several schools of thoughts layered in conversation with one another; creating a feedback-loop of subjectivity versus objectivity. COSMIC LAG prompts the audience to see themselves from a new perspective, encouraging them to reflect on their consciousness and the complexity of others. By layering the real with the virtual I attempt to disconnect the viewer from their idea of self while simultaneously presenting them with the idea of connectedness between humans.
www.tylerryan-meta.com Instagram: @tylertyan Lag.cosmic@gmail.com
Jane Elizabeth Bennett Bennett’s practice is an examination of the world in which she finds her self. To her, existence is filled with systems of discontinuity. Meaning that memories fade, language is inadequate and places continually fracture and reform. Through printmaking, photography, installation and detailed research, she attempts to address and potentially resolve these issues of discontinuity. Her transdisciplinary approach incorporates philosophical, scientific and artistic research to create engaged projects and exhibitions.
www.janeelizabethbennett.com Instagram: @janeebennett bennett.jane.elizabeth@gmail.com
Charmagne Coble Coble explores the complex relationship between absence and presence and how difficult it is to separate the two. By applying chemical experimentation and philosophical research the artist analyses and questions the idea of traces left absent from the human body, creating works formed from decay and grief. Often using her own body as the medium the artist explores bereavement by leaving traces and fragments through powders and chemicals on her skin.
www.charmagnecoble.com coble705@googlemail.com
Alex Blakey Blakey believes that art has the ability to connect us between both the existing and imagined world: it can provide a window into the past or a glimpse into the future. His work draws inspiration from individual and collective stories and memories. Much of Blakey’s work draws connections to the world around us and creates a sense of narrative for the viewer.
www.alxcreations.com Alex.blakey.design@hotmail.com
Katie McGuire McGuire’s work is centred around ideas, thoughts and sensory reactions to notions of restriction and boundaries. She takes an interest in the ways in which form, weight and tension, breaking points and boundaries can be explored through manipulation of her chosen materials. McGuire focuses on exploring the connection between material and its industrial, working class background. She is beginning to take her sculptures to external industrial settings, and experiment with creating site specific work.
www.katiemcguireart.com katiemcguireart@outlook.com
Arron Hansford Hansford is currently exploring aesthetics and its importance within emotionally and conceptually charged artistic practice. His practice uses a variety of media including photography and painting, however due to his studio being closed during the Covid-19 pandemic, Hansford has had to begin experimenting with digital painting.
www.arronluke.com Hansfordarron@gmail.com
Teri Anderson Anderson creates work that looks into the idea of craft in art, textiles, installation and sculpture to create a linear or surreal environment which the audience have to inhabit. The work links to her heritage and how textiles were key in their family history including sample machinists and pattern cutters. Building on this Teri proposes an art practise which incorporates a craft based techniques into the art based discipline of installation.
www.teriandersonsite.wordpress.com Instagram: @tinyteri13 Terianderson@mail.com
Kio Griffith Griffith is an interdisciplinary artist working across graphic design, printmaking, sculpture, sound, video, assemblage, writings, and installation. As he relishes the materiality of found and appropriated objects and images infused with the cross-cultural history in which he perpetually dwells, he often mines his own richly complex family history for personal experiences which create insights into a broader geopolitical context even as they touch on modern-day issues of immigration and hyphenate identities.
www.kiogriffith.com/ kiogriffith@gmail.com
Island Gravity Island Gravity is an artist duo who explore their mutual interests in the poetics of language in the contemporary society. By working from separate locations they keep an active dialogue by sharing past memories and experiences, dreams and ideals. Acknowledging the present world and its continuous changes, they experiment with digital and analogue mediums to explore more traditional and detailed forms of communication.
www.cargocollective.com/island-gravity islandgravity@gmail.com
Julia Holt The paintings Holt produces reflect a continuous transitory state of both human consciousness and the natural world. This ebb and flow is something that she can deeply relate to and connect with the dilemma that we are all facing in relation to the quality of our environment. As a human race we are so threatened by our own actions—a subject that Holt persistently address, presenting the union of the natural world and human consciousness as a visual language that pays attention to this.
Instagram: @juliaholt44 juliaholtart@gmail.com
Aysha Choudhury Choudhury’s work focuses on colour and nature, as well as the contrast between movement and structures. Her self-expressive style delves into the mental state and connection told in storytelling, meaning and conceptual art.
www.ayshaarts.com ayshaarts@gmail.com
Dacc E Dukjan Dukjan’s work explores how we all have masculine and feminine energy within us, considering how over the last few thousand years it has been out of balance with the masculine energy having a much stronger Influence and in control of the way we feel and think. Dukjan’s work explores feminine energy as a way to bring compassion, strength within, heightened intuition, truth, wisdom, unconditional love and spirituality.
www.facebook.com/pg/dacceduk piterlisl@ymail.com
Lisa Doherty-Ball Doherty-Ball explores the properties of light and resin, combining them together to create interesting and complex compositions that spill out of her work, into the viewers space. Her work explores her emotions, considering colour and light to represent this.
www.reflectionslimitlesscreations.co.uk reflectionslimitlesscreations@gmail
Ted Bosy Instagram: @ted.bosy tmaury@me.com
Bosy’s work sustains a poetics of transgression to create new experiential narratives, with an architectural language including analogue and digital methods such as rendering, casting, 3D printing and paper modelling. Her work explores space in multi and mixed media, combining sketches, rendering and modelmaking.
Alice E C Banfield Banfield’s work explores her experiences as an autistic person to deconstruct misconceptions of autism. For example, how the language used by some organizations portray autism as a disease. This came to light following several online debates Banfield engaged in with the anti-vaccination movement; who strongly believe vaccinations cause autism, despite research proved that there is no link. Banfield narrates these experiences through the Spoon Theory; a theory established to measure the amount of energy disabled, mentally and chronically ill people consumed per task.
www.banfield.format.com
aecbanfield@outlook.com
Charlie Barkus Barkus is a visual and research based practitioner currently concerned with the creation and reproduction of space. Barkus’ work explores broad artistic production that reflects upon specific research themes, questioning how space can be cultivated, both physically and as a part of a lived experience.
www.charliebarkus.com charliebarkus@gmail.com
Kehinde Williams Williams is a mixed media artist who explores surrealism in a modern context. His work depicts everyday activities whilst simultaneously considering socio-political issues.
Instagram: @kennywheels_art Kennwil500@gmail.com
Aurelie Crisetig ‘This belongs to everyone, so enjoy the view’ depicts the alteration of landscapes through digital topography. The fragment of areas assembled together compose an ensemble of imaginary panoramas. Every pattern of land represents a variation of time and space in both the digital and physical world. Merged together, each landscape becomes an abstract vision of mending views, recreating a conceptual, unknown environment.
www.acrisetig.com aureliecrisetig@hotmail.com
Jane Peng Peng’s work is an exploration of landscapes - not the ones we see in the physical world, but the landscapes of our inner world. To live is to open ourselves up to all sorts of encounters, some of which are delightful and empowering, whilst others are more hurtful and corrosive. The intensely personal experiences and emotions that we’ve lived through all leave their mark on our mental state, even though we often struggle to describe it in words.
www.janepeng.com/ jane@janepeng.com
Maja Pozar Pozar is a photographer and a model scout. The style of her photography is very much so a continuation of her minimalist fine art works - modest, plain, and quiet. Pozar believes we’re the ones who provide the stories—events, products, and symbols don’t arise with the story and the meaning built in. Pozar’s photographs therefore intentionally lack statement; they’re just an aesthetically pleasing sight in a vacuum. Pozar neither needs nor wants to provide questions, ideas, and conclusions - just a quiet, melancholic haven from the overwhelming and ever present narrative.
www.majapozar.com pozarappointment@gmail.com
Joas Nebe www.jsnebe.de info@jsnebe.de
Nebe’s work explores ways to challenge the viewer through visual riddles, presenting his work in a manner that encourages confusion and thought, disallowing satisfaction at finding an answer within it. His work explores what mindfulness really is, and how it impacts on the everyday.
Christopher Kaczmarek Kaczmarek’s work spans both experimental and traditional practices, including sculpture, site specific installations, performance, video, built circuits and solar-powered objects. His work is often interactive and designed to guide the viewer towards a deeper contemplation about the inhabited environment.
www.chriskaczmarek.com chris@chriskaczmarek.com
Emma Nay Emma Nay is a multimedia artist who creates art where word and image co-exist as one art form, rather than in opposition to one another. In her poetry her voice is nebulous and draws in all the senses. Nay creates her visual imagery through digital drawing and collage, traditional drawing and photography. Much of her work explores sustainability, voyeurism and bodily autonomy.
www.emmanay.com emmanay9@gmail.com
Brigitte Watkinson Watkinson’s work centres on observations and personal experiences as a linguist and teacher who is hyperconscious of how easy it is to get the wrong end of the stick... Found objects, sculpture, poetry and print come together to form a tactile, layered narrative. drawn from everyday conversations, literal translations and poke fun at political rhetoric and propaganda. Watkinson employs metaphors, materials and methods to unravel communication processes and create new narratives.
www.makeslugsbeautiful.co.uk brigittewatkinson@gmail.com
IZZY Instagram: @imaizzynation imaizzynation@gmail.com
Izzy is a Visual Artist who uses Photography, Digital Art, Video and Animation as her mediums to create intricate and thought provoking scenes.
Zoe Crockford Crockford’s current lines of exploration are concerned with a sense of place and the curation of a lived history. She describes herself as naturally drawn to 3 dimensional responses, working with a broad range of media and the freedom that this brings. Two running themes are the key elements of the Johari window concept and the influence and meaning behind the Japanese technique of Kintsugi: fractures, scars, broken pieces of life, highlighted and made more beautiful yet not openly shared beyond the aesthetic. Combining both themes has yielded a depth of exploration where textiles, photography and painting form the groundwork for ceramic outcomes.
Instagram: @zoe_cord_frock Zoecrockford@icloud.com
After Illusion is an online residency opportunity for artists, writers and creatives at any stage of their career. Residencies take place twice per month and are two weeks in length. At the end of each residency, a zine is put together about the resident’s work, and published online. This residency is all about creatives supporting creatives, and is run by an artist. Freedom of expression is the residency's main focus, with no themes or emphases put in place. Creatives are allowed to take their residency in any direction they so wish. You can follow our residencies on Instagram by following us: @AfterIllusion