LUCY GRANT

DISCIPLINE: FINE ART

PERSONAL STATEMENT:
Lucy Grant’s artistic practice has a strong grounding in appreciating the awe in the world that goes unnoticed, predominantly through paintings. This means a lot of their art is inspired by various aspects of nature. Lucy does this by attempting to abstract forms into an ambiguous state; being recognisable as forms in nature and also representing the emotional feeling whilst experiencing nature. This is achieved by focusing on the process of painting: the materiality of the medium, the force between the wall and the brush, layering, dots and gravitational dripping, as means to highlight the complexity of life itself.

The world is infinitely interesting; nature is important because it provides a calmness and stillness that modern life is often lacking. Similar to childlike wonder, Grant interprets colour enthusiastically, emphasising the hues they witness. They paint like they’re seeing the world for the first time. Ultimately their artistic practice focuses on the elements within nature that are the most untouched. Due to humanity’s mass-meddling within landscapes, this means focusing on smaller aspects (such as rocks) within the greater whole. Grant’s interest in rocks has more recently extended to caves - as a contextualisation of these objects within a landscape.

This initial starting point allows Grant to deform and shape the creation of new places through the experimentation of materiality within their paintings, transforming the landscape to one consisting of paint, fabric and negative space. Grant often uses a sticky medium, like wax or oil pastel, on a soft material such as velvet to create a juxtaposition of textures. Similarly, caves are built up over time as mineral deposits from water sources, to eventually harden to their current form. This malleability of a landscape, which is so physically tangible and solid seeming, is what excites them most as an artist. This has further expanded to using paintings as a sculptural form that interacts with the viewer in a similar way a landscape does three-dimensionally.

IMAGES/VIDEOS / PORTFOLIOS:
WEBSITE DIRECT LINK
https://sites.google.com/view/lucygrantdoesart

CONTACT DETAILS:
Instagram: @lucygrantdoesart
Email: lucygrantdoesart@gmail.com

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PENELOPE RUSSELL

DISCIPLINE: MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST

INFORMATION: Penelope Anne Russell is a multidisciplinary artist born in Kent, England, and has been based out of Wiltshire since. In 2023, Russell began her BA Fine Art at the Winchester School of Art (WSA), Southampton University. She completed her degree in 2026, graduating with a First.

While studying at the WSA, she was awarded the Nancy Balfour prize for Sculpture, for her timber sculptures across her discipline and primarily the installation for her final year exhibit. She has participated in several group exhibitions with her peers during her degree, displaying work at the Jubilee Sports Gallery in 2024 and 2025, Southampton University, as well as the Winchester Gallery in 2023.

The artist has since been selected by the post-graduate program Ripe to work in an exclusive artists collective of accomplished graduates selected from Southampton University to present exhibits in the historic God’s House Tower near Southampton’s port. At Ripe, Russell will be working to create collaborative displays from late 2026 through to mid-2027 and will be closely affiliated with A-Space Arts.

Alongside a few of her graduate peers from the WSA, Russell will be exhibiting her work at Safehouse, Peckham, in early September as the collective Tangent.

She continues to be based out of Southampton, though primarily lives and works in Wiltshire, near Frome.

PERSONAL STATEMENT:
I explore the local country around me in my multidisciplinary practice. I uncover extinct customs, aspiring to bring awareness to fragile ecosystems for people and nature.

My lived experiences of rural heritage in England inform my practice, using anecdote to discover intimate places between mortalities. Simultaneous to this, I illustrate visually internal and external histories in relations, considering both the painful and precious to depict uncertain environments to elicit an uncomfortable voyeurism in the viewer.

Much of my practice looks to rural England, exploring earthworks and endangered craft, having recently divulged into passementerie through illustration and sculpture, blowing up minute features nearly invisible in the home, to monstrous shadows lurking in one’s peripherals.

I present items from rural lore integrated into our modern habitats. Ghosts from ancient cultures, whispers of other worlds. From scrap materials I build burial mounds and stiles, trig points and cairns. By manufacturing ancient heritage with modern practices, I bring into question the role of permanence and conservation in the age of mass-manufactured immediacy. I ask the viewer to question the earth they stand on, to listen in careful contemplation for things forgotten, within them and without.

IMAGES/VIDEOS / PORTFOLIOS:

LINK TO PORTFOLIO

CONTACT DETAILS and LINKS:

Email: pennyrussell135@outlook.com

Instagram: @pound_coin_

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MEGAN FILSELL

DISCIPLINE: FINE ART & TEXTILES

PERSONAL STATEMENT:
My current practice is a response to my own experience of feeling alienated and uncomfortable growing up undiagnosed autistic. Through sickly colours and repetitive marks, I am searching for ways to represent a deeply complex feeling. By combining science and fiction I am creating a contrast between outward perspectives from professionals with my own inward emotional experiences.

In between my drawing and painting practice I experiment with textiles. The sensory experience of crochet interconnects with the heightened experience of my daily life. For me crochet brings a sense of play to my practice, a place to vent and process whilst doing something comfortably repetitive. Bringing a hidden disability into something 3D and tangible feels validating for my practice as well helping to strengthen the imagery in my paintings. Colour and materials are important when painting as I need to consider my own sensory needs and sensitivities to certain surfaces, textures and sounds for example. I have found watercolour to be perfect, I can achieve bright colours, which can be built up gradually, and I also like how the paint applies to the surface of paper.

My colours are often influenced by the music I am listening to as I am very rarely painting without it, the way that I process information means I tend to group different things together, such as a certain sound will be paired with a matching colour, this comes in handy when creating my art. For me to be able to fully embrace the way my brain works when painting further highlights the restraints that are forced upon me in other aspects of my life.

My practice aims to confront my own discomfort living with autism as well as my response to other peoples. Depicting struggle, isolation and confusion to reach a place of understanding for myself.

IMAGES/VIDEOS / PORTFOLIOS:
To be added soon

CONTACT DETAILS and LINKS:

Instagram: meganfilsell.art

Email: filsellmegan@gmail.com

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MINGWEI (CHARLIE) YU

DISCIPLINE: CONTEMPORARY CURATION, FINE ART & INSTALLATIONS

PERSONAL STATEMENT:

The idea of ‘Defragmentation’ came from both archaeological fragments in realistic aspect and dystopian post-apocalyptic hypothetical imagery & imagination. The psychology of intentional fixing broken fragments was stemming from a numb and unchanging nature.

In easy words, I take fragments apart and reassemble them into something unrecognizable, but familiar, or the other way around, unfamiliar, but recognizable. By achieving visual Defragmentation, I dissected existing elements and objects into recognizable patterns and connections, hence brought certain degree of illusions into my work.

Gradually, spatial and material composition has become my main focus into an installation, as I started to beware the tension that can generate through scale and dynamics in-between distinct artworks. In the latter stage of development, I broaden my research radius into specific concepts and selective worldbuildings, grab and conjugate necessary components for both graphical and special enhancement, since they possess depth and resonance to Defragmentation direct or indirectly. 

Meanwhile, I purposely narrowed several exclusive artists that extremely close to, or rather, the creative approach I aspire to embody, which is immersible, interpretable, and conceptually developable. As I kept performing Defragmentation through artwork individually, collectively as an installation, I experienced waves of realization on how I compose and connect with my concept internally (symbolisms) and externally (presentations) via transform it into a installation for my degree show.  I believe that determining at what level of fragmentation to begin defragmenting is a highly nuanced topic, as it establishes the threshold for interpreting a work.

This is the process through which I have gradually come to understand Defragmentation, building upon our shared understanding of images, sculptures, and stories.

IMAGES/VIDEOS / PORTFOLIOS:

LINK TO SAMPLE WORK

CONTACT DETAILS and LINKS:

Instagram: _crhaile_

Email: charlieyu701836@gmail.com

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MEICHIA (MAGGIE) CHIU

DISCIPLINE: CONTEMPORARY CURATION

CAREER AREA OF INTEREST: Curation, Artist development and Public Programming . I aspire to contribute to a healthier arts ecosystem that moves beyond one-off exhibitions to foster lasting connections between artists, curators, and audiences. I am particularly interested in developing artist residencies, graduate support programmes, and participatory projects that prioritise collaboration, care, and dialogue. My goal is to help create spaces where artistic practices can thrive, audiences feel engaged and included, and curatorial work functions as a bridge that strengthens relationships within the cultural field. 

BIO: I am a postgraduate student in Contemporary Curating at the University of Southampton (2024–2025), driven by a passion for creating meaningful connections between artists, artworks, and audiences.

My final MA project, Childhood (2025), was co-curated with a WSA Fine Art PhD researcher Qixuan Wu and developed through an open call that brought together diverse perspectives. The project also included an A/B test that compared two collaboration models: working closely with a lead artist to co-curate the exhibition and recruiting the other 14 artists through an open call process.

This experiment allowed me to critically examine how different curatorial approaches influence artistic collaboration, exhibition outcomes, and the curator’s role in shaping dialogue between artists and audiences. 

In summer 2025, I undertook a curatorial internship with Chapel Arts Studios in Andover, where I coordinated the open call for the annual exhibition Wish You Were Here. The open call attracted over 120 works from 60 artists, and I was part of the selection panel that curated 47 works for display. I also supported the exhibition’s planning, installation, and public events, while developing digital content such as an online gallery and virtual tour to expand the exhibition’s reach. 

IMAGES/VIDEOS / PORTFOLIOS:

https://www.chapelartsstudios.co.uk/open-open-2025-onlinetour  

CONTACT DETAILS and LINKS:

https://www.instagram.com/moi_meichia 

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YEWEN ZHANG

DISCIPLINE: FINE ART

CAREER AREA OF INTEREST: Curarion or anything Art related.

 BIO: My painting skills were being taught by my Chinese painter parents. Moreover, I graduated from a fine art high school, got a design bachelor from Shenyang University of Technology and just finished an academic year in MA Contemporary Curating programme at University of Southampton (WSA campus). The most fortunate and honorable thing during my education experience would be making some excellent friends in art-based areas. I wouldn’t like to call them my resources, but they really help and support me a lot, not only personal stuff but also things like my final project exhibition including providing artworks and very professional graphic design.

My personal interests are mainly around curatorial things, which offer a platform for me to do a comprehensive job integrating my own ideas and ability with friends and artists who have different talents. This enthusiasm actually was enhanced when I was a curator assistant in my parents’ friends’ gallery. Furthermore, curating for me is more than making exhibitions but also an opportunity to work in the background linking artists and artworks to the audiences through organisations.

During my bachelor’s degree, I also did some optional modules including simple but systematical training of electrician, lathe operator, even how to operate numerical control machine tools, which makes me can deal with more physical works like exhibition installation. It is noticeable that as a person of millennials, I have been feeling the development of technology. As a result, my personal curatorial interests are mainly topics or practices about technology, such as applying more new technologies in the exhibition for better experience and inclusive curation. I think curating work for me is the best way to release my passion and the desire to express my understanding of art. 

So far, there is fortunately a chance to curate an exhibition named Curated by Others with my team during my master’s degree. This is my first time doing an exhibition in a team from finding a topic to installing the exhibition space, but it is noticeable that professors, teaching staff and gallery staff also offered the team indispensable help and suggestions.

The practical process includes making an open call for finding artists and works of art, selection of works, commissioning a designer, teamwork, installation according to the planned curatorial narratives and negotiating with other curatorial teams. 

IMAGES/VIDEOS / PORTFOLIOS:

DIRECT LINK TO SAMPLE WORK

CONTACT DETAILS and LINKS:

Instagram: @ZHANGYIWEN2325

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DEBORAH PORTER

DISCIPLINE: FINE ART

CAREER AREA OF INTEREST: Career Aspirations: I am currently collaborating with another artist to hold an exhibition in Hampshire. I will be part of the awards and exhibiting a painting at the CASS exhibition in Peckham in October. In November, I will be presenting a slideshow of my work at a 'Pecha Kucha'. I belong to a National artists' network, with London meetings that help build my professional practice.

BIO: Deborah is a feminist artist who uses her own body to look at society's views on female shape and size.

With a 25-year background in the creative industry, she has recently completed an MA in Fine Arts at Winchester School of Art. Her interest is in how the human body psychologically appears to oneself in a certain way, working from body dysmorphisms, eating disorders and addictions, she uses a phenomenological approach to investigate the female body as an objectival space with authenticity, alienation and an absurdity lens. Over the past year, she has exhibited at The Mall Galleries and Unit 1 Gallery in London W10, and has been shortlisted for the CASS Arts Student Award 2025.

IMAGES/VIDEOS / PORTFOLIOS:

www.deborahporterartist.com

CONTACT DETAILS and LINKS:

@deborahporterartist

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YUXIN TENG

DISCIPLINE: FINE ART

CAREER AREA OF INTEREST: Yuxin Teng has developed a practice that merges painting, stitching, sculpture, and installation, allowing materials to guide the work rather than imposing fixed designs

BIO: Yuxin Teng is a Chinese artist currently completing her MA Fine Art at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. With a background in traditional painting form Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, she has developed a practice that merges painting, stitching, sculpture, and installation, allowing materials to guide the work rather than imposing fixed designs.

Her current practice is rooted in a personal and family experience, her father’s congenital spinal condition. This encounter with a fragile, hereditary structure became a starting point for imagining how her own body might carry hidden risks and unspoken memories. From there she began to build a visual language of bones, seams, scars, and thorns-not to heal or conceal, but to keep the wound breathing. Teng’s works often take shape through fragile materials such as mulberry paper, thread, and branches. These materials embody both tenderness and vulnerability, whispering a kind of memory that lies beyond language. Her practice emphasizes non-linear growth, hesitation, and incompleteness. Cracks, sutures, and provisional frames are not mistakes but metaphors for an unfinished subjectivity.

Through this process, Teng aims to create spaces where viewers can approach the work intimately, sensing the coexistence of trauma and care, fragility and resilience. Her aspiration is to continue this research at doctoral level, expanding her exploration of “bones as emotional structures” into broader conversations around feminist theory, epigenetics, and material culture.

IMAGES/VIDEOS / PORTFOLIOS:

LINKS TO BE ADDED HERE

CONTACT DETAILS and LINKS:

TO FOLLOW

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