Artist talk: Sally Gilford and Hannah Leighton-Boyce

A Castlefield Gallery Associeates event

Coinciding with our exhibition featuring Ruth Barker and Hannah Leighton-Boyce, and programmed as part of Castlefield Gallery’s CG Associates series of monthly events, we are pleased to bring together Sally Gilford and Hannah Leighton-Boyce to talk about their different approaches to bringing scientific input into their recent work.

Sally Gilford is an artist, maker and creative practitioner, specialising in screen printed textiles, education and social enterprise. Currently working with researchers from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Matrix Research, she is interested in exploring the connections between art and science, creating distinctive responses to original images of scientific research. Her work poses questions about our own mortality and seeks to offer new perspectives on the human condition.

Sally is also a member of >thread{ } collective who create generative artwork that subverts and connects textile heritage using analogue and digital processes. Working with code and human biodata, they produce digital imagery which is interpreted through print and surface pattern. They are currently exhibiting in Edit 02 at The Lowry, for which they worked with a group of young people on a week-long project at Islington Mill to create a body of abstract works toinform the exhibition. The exhibition runs from 17 March to 22 April and coincides with the symposium on socially engaged art Uncommon Ground in March 2018.

Sally graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University with a BA (Hons) in Interactive Arts in 2007;  she is based at Islington Mill Studios in Salford where she also co-founded screen print specialists One69A in 2009 and most recently, Salford Makers.

Hannah Leighton-Boyce‘s work explores historical narratives through site-specific actions, sculpture, drawing, sound and installation. She developed new works for the exhibition at Castlefield Gallery through a residency at Glasgow Women’s Library and through working with a chemist at Salford University and the Lancashire casting workshop Scartworks. The exhibition tours to Glasgow Womens Library in February 2019.

Previous works include The Event of the Thread (2014), a collaborative live sculpture made with residents of Helmshore, Lancashire, set within the context of the area’s industrial heritage, and Instruments of Industry, an audio installation at Touchstones Rochdale (2016) funded by a New Opportunities Award [New Expressions3], which explored ideas of disembodiment and labour through the resonant properties and work history of objects within the museum’s collection. Instruments of Industry was pressed on 10” vinyl and released in 2017 with Folklore Tapes’ Industrial Folklore Series.

Hannah graduated with a BA (Hons) in Textiles from Winchester School of Art in 2005 and completed the MA in Textiles at Manchester School of Art in 2012. She has works in private and public collections including: Touchstones Art Gallery, Rochdale; Salts Mill, West Yorkshire; Ackworth Quaker School, West Yorkshire. Recent group exhibitions include Excuse Me While I am Changing, Rogue Projects Space, Manchester; New Work, The Manchester Contemporary 2016; Women Artists from 1861 -2015, Touchstones Art Gallery, Rochdale; For Posterity, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester (2015); People and Process: A history of Salts Mill, Salts Mill, Saltaire.

£5 / FREE for CG Associates. Book at Eventbrite

CG Associates is Castlefield Gallery’s membership scheme for artists, writers and independent curators working in contemporary art.

Find out more about CG Associates at https://www.castlefieldgallery.co.uk/associates/