SPARK #18: Gather

Venue: Rogue Project Space, Barrass Street Manchester M11 1P

Talks and panel Q&A by invited speakers Rebecca Chesney, Liz Postlethwaite and Debbie Yare

Limited capacity, please register here

SPARK #18 will explore Artists’ Interventions in a Time of Crisis through the lens of our invited speakers and the exhibition. Talks start as 12; the exhibition will be open from 11 am.

SPARK: Artists’ Interventions in a Time of Crisis is the first exhibition by members of the SPARK Artists Network, who have been meeting since June 2022. Their monthly events have included guerilla gardening, moss walks, exploring urban and rural ecologies, tours of political sites and exhibition visits. The exhibition aims to engender conversation and collaboration and foster the cross-pollination of ideas.

Rebecca Chesney is a visual artist whose work examines our complex relationship with the natural world and our perception of landscape, by engaging with issues of culture, politics and power. Her artworks take the form of installations, videos, drawings, prints, maps and walks and are often created in response to specific places

Debbie Yare is a visual artist working across media with an interest in photography, video, sound, drawing, writing, and performance. Her practice is largely concerned with understanding, recording and translating direct experiences of environments on and around Morecambe Bay, where she lives. Recent work explores the coast between Hest Bank and the River Keer estuary.

Liz Postlethwaite is a participatory artist and organizer with a background in theatre making. She makeswork that explores how we can take inspiration from the natural world to create places and spaces where regenerative cultures can grow, and where all species can thrive.

SPARK was set up by Castlefield Gallery in 2022 to bring together artists wanting to intervene in the climate crisis. SPARK #18 follows on from Castlefield Gallery’s SUSTAIN programme focussed on low carbon artmaking and from the first seventeen SPARK sessions at Manchester Art Gallery, Rogue, The Birley (Preston), Eccles Friends Meeting House, Manchester Museum, AIR Gallery, Paradise Works, Editional Studio, Cadishead and Little Woolden Moss, Gallery Oldham and the John Rylands Library. The SPARK sessions are intended to help seed a new Greater Manchester/North West-based network of artists working low carbon.