Artists

ANA LUÍSA CRUZ

Ana Luísa is a research student working with writing as art practice. She was born in Angola in 1973, but grew up in Portugal, in the outskirts of Lisbon, near the sea, often travelling to the countryside to her family’s birth places. Having moved to the UK in 1997, she completed an HND in Photography and Contemporary Imaging and a BA in Fine Art Photography at Stockport College, and in 2002 an MA in Communication Media at Manchester Metropolitan University. During the 7 years to come, spent in Lisbon and away from the darkroom, Ana grew increasingly interested in writing as practice.

Becoming a mother in 2008, she returned to both England and Manchester Metropolitan University in 2009 to a practice based PhD in search for a view of photography through writing. Ana has been awarded a scholarship for completing her MA by the Portuguese Centre of Photography (2000), Oporto, and a Doctoral Scholarship by the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, Lisbon (ongoing). In 2004 she was awarded third place in the national fine arts competition Galeria Aberta, Jorge Vieira Museum/Câmara Municipal de Beja, South of Portugal.

—

ANA MENA

Ana Mena was born in Lisbon, a city where she graduated and obtained a Master’s degree in Fine Arts, at the University of Lisbon.  She has been an associate member of the Secção de Investigação Volte Face – Medalha Contemporânea(Centre for Research and Fine Arts Studies ) since 2007.

Her work focuses on the representation of the body as a mystery matrix through time, fascination and passion in pursuit of an endless discovery of perfection. Every look is recognized in its registration, time, intensity, strength, the will of several strands or the proximity of reality, any reality.

It is in this mobility that the differences are accentuated by checking the “time”, the world and knowledge, that the presence of the body becomes the subject, always recognizable and meaningful in an endless game – the man around his own image.

—

ANA ROSA HOPKINS

Heart Beat & Cold Veins. By Ana Rosa Hopkins

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ana Rosa Hopkins is a British Artist. She is currently studying a PhD by Practice in Art & Design at MIRIAD following her MA in Fine Art. Born in Cordoba, Argentina, where she lived for 20 years, she has since located in many different countries. Ana is now Manchester-based where she continues her work and research. Recently she was awarded the neo:artprize 2012.

For the last six years Ana has focused on working with different forms of glass, exploring its physical qualities and ambiguities. She works in the margins between sculpture and glass using the medium to create multi-layered messages which challenge approaches to glass making and the boundaries of how the material can be used. Mostly working with found glass and mirrors she treats glass making as a process of investigation often adding substances to produce unpredictable and unexpected outcomes.

—

CRISTINA RODRIGUES

My Country Through Your Eyes. Photography by Cristina Rodrigues

 

 

 

 

 

Cristina Rodrigues is a Senior Architect, Exhibition Curator and Researcher/PhD Candidate at MIRIAD – Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art & Design. She is in charge  of two research projects – ‘Villages in the Interior of Portugal’ and ‘Design for Desertification’, – which she has founded, while owner director of CR Architects, and is now developing in partnership with MIRIAD, MSA – Manchester School of Architecture, Penela City Council, Idanha-a-Nova City Council and UNESCO Geopark Naturtejo. Cristina is also guest lecturer at MSA – Manchester School of Architecture, U.K. and at Zhongyuan University of Technology (ZUT), in China.

She is the arts director & curator of the itinerary exhibition entitled ‘21^st Century Rural Museum’, created in response to desertification, depopulation and economic decline, and using Idanha-a-Nova as a case study. Her vision is to create rural regeneration by involving artists, designers and writers in a collaborative project that could have a real impact on rural areas. Her photography works titled ‘The People’s Wall’ and ‘My Country Through Your Eyes’ will be exhibited in Guangdong Museum of Art, an iconic contemporary Art museum in China.

Since 2009 Cristina has been travelling regularly to a number of villages and small settlements in the Interior of Portugal. During these fieldtrips she has used photography as one of her main tools to capture moments in these people’s daily lives and events. Her collection of photos entitled ‘My Country Through Your Eyes’ and photo installation entitled ‘The People’s Wall’ are included in the ‘21^st Century Rural Museum’. They illustrate the unbalanced demographics and how this affects Portugal’s economy and environment. Her research focuses on new and sustainable forms of rural design that can help to combat human and land desertification, in the context of a world undergoing accelerated processes of globalisation. Human Desertification is a problem affecting the whole interior of Portugal, which has had a negative impact on local economies and the environment. Several countries in Southern Europe share these major challenges.

—

DAVID HALEY

Installation in Hong Kong. Work by David Haley

 

 

 

 

 

Ecological artist, David Haley is a Research Fellow in MIRIAD. He is a founding member of SEA: Social and Environmental Arts Research Centre, A&E: Art & Ecology Research Group, Water & Well-Being and he leads the MA Art As Environment programme. Haley is an active member of the Public Art & Urban Design Observatory, the eco-arts network, greenmuseum.org, ACN (Art, Culture, Nature) and a Trustee of Helix Arts, the Mersey Basin Trust and Director of Harrison Studio & Associates (Britain) Ltd. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts, Manufacture and Commerce and member of the Peer Review College – Arts & Humanities Research Council. In addition to ecological arts commissions, he contributes regularly to international journals, publications and conferences.

His long-term ecological arts programme for Shrewsbury Museum and Gallery considers creative opportunities for the future of people living with climate change and the River Severn. Recent projects include Rivers from the Future that critiques the aesthetic and ethical values of the ‘new suburbia’ over freshwater, A Walk On The Wild Side, commissioned by Urbis to perform a series of community Wild Walks for the Wild Futures exhibition and website in March 2007 and Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground, Gaining Wisdom with Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison to determine how we might ‘withdraw gracefully’ as the sea levels rise.

—

JOHN HYATT

The Chord of Trees. Oil on Canvas by John Hyatt

 

 

 

 

 

 

John Hyatt is a polymath: artist, songwriter, musician, author, curator and tabletop scientist. In the late 1980s, he was the youngest artist ever selected to represent British Art, featured as the cover of the Arts Council of England’s ‘The British Art Show’. He has continued to make art and exhibit nationally and internationally. John has also had a notable academic career. He was Head of the Department of Fine Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University from 1991 – 2002. At the time of receiving his personal Chair in 1993, John became one of the youngest Professors in the UK. In 2002, he founded and became Director of MIRIAD – Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art & Design, where he continues to lead and support 90 researchers and 80 PhD students on a variety of projects worldwide.

—

LEWIS SYKES

Cymatic Adufe. Installation by Lewis Sykes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lewis Sykes is an artist, musician and digital media producer/curator based in Manchester, UK. A veteran bass player of the underground dub-dance scene of the 90s he performed and recorded with Emperor Sly, Original Hi-Fi and Radical Dance Faction and was a partner in Zip Dog Records. He honed an interest in mixed media through an MA in Hypermedia Studies at the University of Westminster in 2000 and continued to fuse music, visuals and technology through a series of creative collaborations – most notably as musician and performer with the progressive audiovisual collective The Sancho Plan (2005-2008) and currently as one half of Monomatic.

Director of Cybersonica – an annual celebration of music, sound art and technology (now in its ninth year), he was also Coordinator of the independent digital arts agency Cybersalon (2002-2007), founding Artists in Residence at the London Science Museum’s Dana Centre.

Lewis is in the second year of a Practice as Research PhD at MIRIAD, exploring the aesthetics of sound and vibration.

—

LUÍS QUINTAIS

ARENA

‘You are peripheral to nature’, says the animal that interacts with you in silence, the animal bleeding at the slaughterhouse or the one announcing the dexterity and skill with which he receives the merciful stroke, the painless movement by a hand on the ropes of his own end. A mind being stared at, an animal mind, ponders the intention, the making of the blades ready for use and recreational invention. The schematic stare of the animal that fears nothing for he has long recognised your superior lightness and all its strength is in the trap of the recognition and in his patient waiting, which comes from his awareness. In the arena, the moving of a black mass compromised by the inhumane nothingness is but your stare returned, the certainty of the ancient and archaic contact. There is a truth in the animal’s stare which draws your likeness on that interior space which is our mutual darkness.

Born in Angola (1968), Luís Quintais moved with his family to Portugal after the Portuguese colonies in Africa gained their independence, in 1975. He did his university studies in Lisbon and is currently a professor of social anthropology at the University of Coimbra. His first book of poetry, A Imprecisa Melancolia (Indefinite Melancholy), won the Aula de Poesia de Barcelona Prize and was published in 1995. His sixth title, Duelo (Duel) won the 2004 Portuguese PEN Club Prize for Poetry and, in 2005, the Luís Miguel Nava Foundation Prize. His last book of poetry is Riscava a Palavra Dor no Quadro Negro (Scratching The Word Pain in the Blackboard) and was published in 2010. The most important part of his work could be found at Livros Cotovia (www.livroscotovia.pt).

—

PAUL CURETON

Paul Cureton is an artist, PhD candidate in Landscape Architecture and associate at Manchester School of Architecture exploring the relationship between drawing and visualising. Paul is also working on his Pathway to Chartership (P2C) to become a chartered Landscape Architect. His work focuses on representations in landscape architecture and the translation between representation and production. Having originally trained in fine arts, taking further study in cultural theory, urban regeneration and moving to landscape, his educational background has involved inter-disciplinarity throughout.

His recent research includes the exploration of the discursive space of drawing and environment through the co-curation of the international exhibition ‘The 43 Uses of Drawing’, 2011. Recent research work includes showing in the ‘Visualising Architecture Exhibition’, Union of International Architects, Design 2050, Tokyo 2011, and a co-authored a chapter titled ‘Thinking Drawing: aesthetic choice as ethical marker in student drawings’, in the illustrated publication Representing Landscapes, edited by Nadia Amoroso and published by Routledge in March 2012. Articles include ‘Artificial Coral Reef Construction on the Work of Wolf Hilbertz’ published in the journal Materials, Architecture, Design and Environment (M.A.D.E.). He is currently writing on the ‘Arcologies’ of architect Paolo Soleri.

Texts and Images protected by Copyright

—