BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Bruce Davies (b. 1972, Wirral) is an Artist / Writer and Curator of BasementArtsProject. His work looks primarily at the relationship between artist, gallery and viewer; how environments can shape the perception and understanding of an artwork and how a space can alter the nature of the work itself. It has been this line of enquiry along with four years as the organiser, curator, project manager and founder member of the Peripheral Artist Collective that led to the formation of BasementArtsProject. He is also a Co-Director and writer for South Leeds Life
As BasementArtsProject he has developed a programme which has, over the last decade, become embedded in the South Leeds Community. He has created an established programme of activities and exhibitions throughout the year at his South Leeds venue. BasementArtsProject participate regularly in external events that have taken many artist’s work to Jamestown USA, Sweden, Manchester, London, Liverpool and other venues around Leeds.
BasementArtsProject is regularly involved in projects that revolve around community participation as well as supporting and assisting in the development of artists work for other purposes.
For a full Mission Statement about BasementArtsProject visit: https://www.basementartsproject.com/about
For a full CV of Bruce Davies visit: https://www.basementartsproject.com/bruce-davies-cv
Through all she does, Lydia Catterall aims to reveal, support and champion creative brains, transforming the make-up of where we live. Whether operating as an artist, researcher, collaborator, writer or facilitator, she works for the recognition of the inherent value of artists across sectors and the deepening of a strong artistic economy. She set up home in Leeds in 2010 and has been a friend of Basement Arts ever since.
Dr. Alan Dunn (b. 1967, Glasgow) studied at Glasgow School of Art and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was curator of The Bellgrove Station Billboard Project (Glasgow 1990-91), lead artist on the tenantspin project (FACT, Liverpool 2001-7) and completed his PhD in 2014 on sound art based on the 10xCD opus The sounds of ideas forming. Through these projects he has developed collaborative content with Bill Drummond, Douglas Gordon, Gerhard Richter, Yoko Ono, Philip Jeck, Chris Watson, Roy Claire Potter, Pauline Oliveros and Brian Eno along with elderly high-rise tenants, Wirral Drug Rehab, Big Issue in the North, European Special Olympics, Great North Run and schools in Cologne and Washington DC.
Dunn creates new curatorial models that bring together professionals, art students and members of the public in presenting audio or digital artworks around certain themes, for example FOUR WORDS, a series of textual animations first developed in 2016 for Liverpool Media Wall and extended to Bath Spa University, Channel 4 and an Augmented Reality app in 2021. Contributors to FOUR WORDS include Gilbert & George, MIT, Singh Twins, Malik Al Nasir, Kraftwerk, Scanner, RedmenTV, DaDaFest and David Fairclough (Liverpool FC 1975-83). Between 2020-22 Dunn is one of six artists on the Arts Council England and Baring Foundation funded Where the Arts Belong research project with Bluecoat and Belong exploring the impact of contemporary art on dementia care settings and during the same period, he is lead investigator on Hear Us O Lord From Heaven Thy Dwelling Place, an AHRC-funded network taking place on sailings between Liverpool and Isle of Man to consider the writing of Malcolm Lowry in relation to increased care for our oceans.
Dunn has developed further projects with ICA, Tate Britain, Liverpool Art Prize, BBC Radio and the Anthony Burgess Foundation and has exhibited in Norway, Brazil, New Zealand, Argentina and Portugal. He currently lives and works in Liverpool City Region and is a Reader in Fine Art at Leeds Beckett University. Between 2011-2020 he was Arts Editor of the online journal Stimulus Respond and Board Member (2016-20 ) at East Street Arts in Leeds. He runs the cantaudio sound label and is co-founder of Alternator Studio & Project Space in Birkenhead.
Website: https://alandunn67.co.uk
Instagram/Twitter: @alandunn67
For a full CV, visit: https://alandunn67.co.uk/alandunncvoctober2020.pdf
Bhavani Esapathi is a writer, maker & social-tech activist focussed on immigration politics, healthcare and autoimmune or invisible diseases. She founded The Invisible Labs; a social-tech space for those living with invisible conditions funded by Innovate UK & The British Council. Currently, she stands as an elected Councillor for The Royal Society for the Arts, Member of NHS Team for Lung Diseases & NHS Engagement Network. Her work has been shown within Europe, UK & Asia between the spaces of art & technology. Her most recent work involves building anti-racism policies into the framework of cultural institutions supported by The RSA, The National Archives & Impact Hub. You can learn more about her by visiting her website or say hello on Twitter @bhaesa.
Karl England is an artist. Often people ask him if he's made any art recently – whilst looking right at it. Mostly this seems like a good state of affairs. Karl's work is centered on exploring the space between intent and actuality. His output consists of his studio practice and the management of the arts initiative Sluice. Sluice, like Karl, is London based but transnationally facing.
Sluice strategically adopts structures in order to showcase artist, curator and emergent discourse, projects and galleries. In turns Sluice is an anti-art fair, an international peripatetic expo, a biennial, a project space, a gallery, a residency and a magazine. Sluice is all these things in order to inhabit self-organised art activity as an expanded art practice, not as something removed from the act of creation, but rather as a continuation.
Deborah Davies
Debs Davies has one foot in the ‘real’ world, as a primary school teacher and one foot in the artistic one, as an aspiring writer. In truth, there is no differentiation between the two worlds - only barriers which Debs would like to see broken down.
Keith Ackerman came to sculpting relatively late in life. His first career, as a Chartered Electrical Engineer, was in industry followed by teaching electronics to young unemployed people in Chapeltown then lecturing in computing to asylum seekers and refugees.
Following sculpting courses at Bradford and York colleges, including seven years with the sculptor Dominic Hopkinson, Keith concentrates on stone carving and glass casting as his main artistic processes. Keith sculptures are abstract and often made from local stone.
Before exhibiting at BasementArtsProject , Keith was already involved with Beeston; setting up the Interfaith charity, Inter-Active with Beeston resident, Mahbub Nazir. He is now CEO of the Leeds-based interfaith charity, Bridging Difference. Through these organisations Keith has run interfaith projects for young people in Leeds since 2008. These projects, including one called Art for Dialogue, bring people together from different faith backgrounds to work on sport, cultural, art or ecological projects, and they have proved their worth in breaking down barriers and stereotypes.
A strong link between Keith’s sculpture and interfaith work is being forged by his sculpture, “Jacob’s Ladder”. Bruce Davies’s current major project from BasementArtsProject, ‘On The Corner’ described this piece as: “a sculpture by Keith Ackerman which, when scaled up from its current size would form the centrepiece for an area of amenity space bounding Tunstall Road and Dewsbury Road, South Leeds.” This sculpture, reflecting a story sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims, would form the basis of workshops based around the carving.
For a full CV of Keith Ackerman visit: http://chiseland.com/about.html
Amy Kitchingman is an early-career museum educator and writer. She holds a BA in English from King's College, University of Cambridge, and is currently studying for an MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies at the University of Leeds. Her research interests include community collaboration in arts spaces and queer history. Hailing from a working-class background in Leeds, Amy’s collaboration with BasementArtsProject represents a return to her roots.
She has recently completed a research role for Thackray Medical Museum as part of her MA, which can be viewed here: https://thackraymuseum.co.uk/transgender-pioneers-roberta-cowell-michael-dillon-and-harold-gillies/'