Upcoming exhibition:
Summerhall, Edinburgh 5-11 June
Meet the artists event 5th June - FREE to attend
Explore the artists by clicking the names below.
Birutė Nomeda Stankunienė (b. 1963) is a Lithuanian artist based in Vilnius. After a career in engineering, she shifted entirely to art, graduating from the Vilnius Academy of Arts in 2009 and later studying at the Slade School of Fine Art, residencies in Spain, and the Contemporary Art Academy. She has exhibited in over thirty shows, with notable presentations in London and Florence, often represented by the Italian gallery Immaginaria at ARTVILNIUS. Her work appears on Saatchi Art, in IUOMA and Slow Art Day publications, and in international media. Her paintings are held in private collections worldwide.
Statement
I describe my practice as Existential Movement — abstract gestures shaped by emotion, memory, and the resilience of the human psyche. Influenced by psychoanalysis, physics, and mathematics, I use color fields, textured strokes, and linear marks to create distilled visual “formulas” of inner states.
Working across canvas, paper, and experimental materials, I explore how abstraction can hold experiences of challenge, recovery, and transformation. My titles act as bridges, guiding viewers into the emotional terrain of each work.
Monkman is half Danish, brought up in County Durham and currently works in York, UK. He studied art at Lancaster University, John Moores Liverpool and UCL London. Monkman has exhibited widely and is in a variety of public and private collections including the National Portrait Gallery London.
Statement
Since winning the BP Portrait Award in 2009 with a depiction of his 12 year old daughter as ‘The Changeling’. Monkman has always been interested in how appearances can be captured suggesting more complex notions of identity. As a father of 3 and an art teacher in schools Monkman has drawn on his experiences to shape artworks which explore change, appearance and cultural identity. In the last few years the Changeling concept has been extended in the doppelgänger series depicting a child meeting their double as a reflection, making reference to the digital screen that blur distinction between fiction and reality in a new world of scrolling and avatars.
I make small, colorful and surrealistic images and soft sculptures. These pieces reflect the patriarchal view of women and other animals as objects, while considering their subsequent treatment, and the relationship that exists between the two. My work addresses the inconsistencies in their existence and makes viewers aware of the injustices, constraints, and exploitations that happen to living beings because of their gender or species. My artistic research is based on feminist perspectives, which have traditionally been dismissed and disregarded.
The images and objects are parallel expressions for me, but they inspire each other. Figurative elements that emerge in my multi-layered and multi-perspective drawings and paintings are developed further into sculptures, which in turn inspire my two-dimensional work and lead to derivatives or descendants. I stitch and sew the sculptures from used fabric and other materials that I have at hand, or that come into my possession accidentally.
The process, materials, techniques, and sizes reflect upon feminine traditions and roles that have often been disregarded as craft in the art world. These pieces reveal and protest the instrumentalization of female bodies in a patriarchal society and the dilemmas of female life. The figures have their own narrative, which I explore and visualize in photographs and gives a voice to the unheard.
The devaluation of women and animals often shows itself through bodily restrictions and infringements, as well as spatial containment within the home or farm. My works similarly reflect restrictive spatial aspects. They are ambiguous and can unfold different shapes and meanings depending on their or the viewer’s position.
I am based in Hamburg, Germany, and hold Master degrees and a PhD in Fine Art, Art History and Philosophy, and further qualifications in Education and Business. My work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and is represented in private collections.
For more information follow me on Instagram renatemaas_artist and visit my website renatemaas.com.
Susan E. Wilson explores abstraction as a means of conveying ideas, emotions and lived experience. Based in Sutherland, Scotland, her widely exhibited work is held in private collections across the UK and internationally.
Statement
A passionate belief in the power of the arts to effect personal and social change, has shaped my long career as an artist in my personal creative practice, through collaborative work and as an arts educator or facilitator of participatory and collaborative arts opportunities. My own individual practice is an iterative, learning process explored through the physical handling of materials, to reveal the sensory possibilities of each medium. I interpret my own physical journeys through the lens of social geography: integrating feminism, mapping, history and myth, to illuminate contemporary issues through abstract painting, collage and drawing.
Website https://susanelizabethwilson.com/
Email Artinfo@susanelizabethwilson.com
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/susan_e_wilson
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SusanElizabethWilson
Tina Roe (Hertfordshire UK) uses materials to create sculpture that reflects the fragility of the human condition. Tina’s practice investigates the concept of home as self-identity. Primitive house shaped sculptures point to a profound centre of meaning and a central emotional and physical reference point. ‘Home’ often encapsulates feelings of security, happiness and belonging, but may also symbolise obligation, coercion, and social repression. It is this dichotomy that the artist is exploring in her current body of work.
Statement
The concept of home is integral to my practice but instead of focusing on the architectural materiality of a house, my work reflects intagibles such as memory, humour, identity and familly histories. I use materials to tell a story.