featured artists

meet the artists

amanda

Amanda creates colourful sculptures for public places, and helps to build compassionate, caring communities through creative workshops and teaching. She is a passionate advocate of the therapeutic power of touch and working by hand and is drawn to strong patterns, powerful shapes and organic forms. Her clients have included Forest Enterprise, the Fieldfare Trust, London Borough of Sutton, Southampton City Council, Groundwork and the National Trust. Amanda Randall is also a silversmith making bold, tactile jewellery pieces, sculpture and metal vessels.

ije

Ije (eejay) is a Scottish/Nigerian artist-healer. Her practice draws on a lifetime of moving across the UK and beyond exploring landscapes, from mining and farming communities to industrial towns and cities, to wild spaces of mountains and coastlines. Her painting, photography, installation and writing are products of immersive experiences, connecting audiences with the transformative properties of expansive natural spaces. Textured paintings with inclusions of manufactured materials are often described as bold and energetic, reflecting the feelings, political resonance, and sensuousness of her encounters.

julia

Julia follows the SLOW textile movement, creating works from sustainable materials including found and home dyed linen and cotton fabrics and re-using gifted sewing ephemera. She leads workshops in English Paper Piecing and Slow running stitch, supporting well-being and mental health.Julia was the designer and led a team six artists to create the coat for Godiva Awakes (Imagineer Productions) for the Cultural Olympiad, London 2012. She was Artist in Residence at The War Memorial Park, Coventry as part of their WW1 Commemorations. She recently co-founded the Coventry Textile Artists Group, a collective that seeks to maximise opportunities for textiles artists in Coventry. Julia is also the producer for Theatre Absolute in Coventry.

michala

Michala’s work belongs to a British romantic landscape tradition. She works between textiles, paintings and poetry. The landscapes she creates are a personal interpretation, an autobiographical account of an internal, emotional, poetic, landscape, referencing her own femininity and ideology. She identifies as part of a generation described as “the Innocents”, those who grew up before digitisation of the world. Her work investigates materials, nature, the handmade, the human hand and it’s relevance in shaping our existence in a digital era.

adele

Adele Mary Reed has been experimenting with photographic imagery, written word, collage and video through diaristic practices from a very young age. She graduated with a First Class BA (Hons) in Photography from Coventry University in 2016 and has exhibited widely across the UK. She carefully creates and records observations of the places she finds herself in and in doing so seeks to playfully highlight, maintain, introduce or restore the inconspicuous beauty within moments occurring during day-to-day life. She is interested in analogue methodology and the materiality of film and video tape, cataloging personal archives, taking unplanned walks, plant-life, elusive moods of stillness and balance, topographical and urban themes and since her child was born in 2017, representations of mothers and maternal figures.

rachel

Installation is often the mainstay of Rachel Doughty’s art practice and the subject is nearly always social comment, focussing particularly on those issues that affect women and children. Her practice usually features the human form, whether it is present or absent from the work and she draws inspiration from her personal experiences or knowledge. Past work has looked at the practice of international adoption, with the focus on commodification. Research plays an important role in her practice and usually means connecting with the people involved in the issues she comments on.

sherrie

Sherrie Edgar is a multidisciplinary visual artist creating innovative art films, audio, installation, and photography. Her work focuses on loneliness and isolation, youth culture, feminism, and mixed heritage. Recent work produced for City of Culture 2021 is Refugee Week 'Sanctuary of Our City' film, Visual Album 'Bhangra Pauna' music video, and Coventry Creates 'Mental Perspective' in collaboration with Midlands Health and Productivity Pilot, funded by the Midlands Engine for Coventry Creates. Edgar was awarded City of Culture 2021 International Changemaker and Coventry Art Prize 2018 and has exhibited across the midlands region.

andrea

Andrea Mbarushimana is a visual and community artist with decades of experience. From graphic short stories exhibited at the Herbert and in Coventry Cathedral Chapel of Unity, to brick walls, libraries and schools, working with Imagineer and Coventry Artspace among others, the chances are that, if you live in Coventry, you will have seen her work somewhere, at some time. Andrea now mostly creates landscapes in acrylic and multimedia miniatures based on maps and the natural world. She is also a poet and featured in the 2021 BBC Contains Strong Language Festival.