CCLG Registerd Charity No. 1182637
On Saturday 15th February 2020, we held the first ‘Hush Hush Art Auction’ . This was a fundraising auction of original postcard-sized artworks by established and leading artists, illustrators and designers, and emerging artists. Our guests at the 5th Anniversary Celebration of the Joel Prince Starlight Fund were given a chance to get their hands on original works of art. Each postcard was only signed on the back, so those taking part didn’t know the identity of the artists until after the auction winners had been announced. We were absolutely thrilled with the response received by artists all over the country and send our love and gratitude to all those who supported us
This year we are so pleased
to announce...
took place over 5 days hosted by
Bath Spa University, Locksbrook Campus, Locksbrook Road, Bath BA 3EL.
From Friday 17th June until Wednesday 22 June
With a fantastic selection of artworks,
our impressive line-up included the following artists:
Professor Steve Dutton, Dr Michele Whiting, Dr Conor Wilson, Jenny Dunseath, Dr Robert Luzar, Rachel Withers, Tara Jetto , Amy Butlin and Rosi Pineiro
Steve Dutton is an artist, researcher and curator who works on both collaborative and individual projects. He is currently developing a new body work under the working title of “the phantom industry” which is including drawings, sound works, animations, objects and texts. His work is difficult to classify, as it moves between various media, materials, processes and forms. Steve also works in collaborations, currently with Andrew Bracey on a Curatorial project entitled 'Midpointness' which has had manifestations for the the Lock Up Gallery in Newcastle, Australia, The Trans Art Triennial and Airspace in Stoke-on-Trent, UK. Up until April 2022, Steve was Professor of Fine Art at Bath School of Art, Film and Media, Bath Spa University where he was the Director of the Art Research Centre. Before Bath Spa he was Professor in Contemporary Art Practice at the University of Lincoln in the U.K. prior to which he was Reader in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam for 5 years and Professor in Creative Practice at Coventry University for 4 years (where he founded and developed Lanchester Gallery Projects along with Sadie Kerr). He is now Professor Emeritus at Bath Spa University.
Dr Conor Wilson
An artist / maker / lecturer / writer, currently teaching ceramics at Bath School of Art, Film and Media. Despite developing a specialist knowledge of ceramics over 25 years, Conor characterises his practice as a mix of craft and bricolage, veering between various processes and approaches that fall under the broad disciplinary umbrellas of art, craft and design.
Conor completed a practice-based research project [Writing_Making: Object as body, language and material] in 2016, through which new intersections of practice and theory were investigated. Working methods were developed that exploit the potential of making as a means of generating writing and the potential of writing to generate, or to contaminate, making. Drawing on recent developments in philosophy and literary theory (primarily Object Oriented Ontology and Uncreative Writing), making was explored as an intimate engagement between body and material. Drawing on Tim Morton’s conception of objects as ‘strange strangers’ (and rhetoric as a means of contacting them), craft making was explored as an intimate engagement with, or a form of contact with, another object. Writing and making were brought together in a range of new methods that bring writing into the making process and generate writing out of practice.
Rosi Pineiro
Rosi Pineiro is an author, poet, healer and artist. Rosi's introduction to writing started in 2005 when she began keeping a journal charting her healing journey. Over time and taking her by surprise, poetry appeared in her journal pages as well as ideas for a children's book. This book, "The Adventures of an Elf Detective ~ The case of Tut Tut's Missing Hats" was published in October 2014. Rosi is currently working on book 2 in the series. She regularly writes poetry and had her first poem published in the online magazine Ascension Magazine and has had poems included in the anthology "Poems for Children" published by Forward Poetry. From an entry pool of 2,200 poets she came third in a poetry competition hosted by World Writing Desk and five of her poems will be appearing in their anthology later this year. Rosi is also a bi-monthly columnist for the E-Zine magazine 'Off The Cuff' where she shares short stories and poems.
Rosi is also a healer and works in the field of vibrational medicine specialising in brain trauma; specifically early childhood trauma due to abuse and neglect. Since 2008 she has been creating a range of essences that tap into the areas of the brain where this trauma is held.
Robert Luzar is an artist, writer and educator living in Bristol, UK. Born in Slovenia, raised in Canada, and having lived in the UK for over a decade, his life has been shaped by experiences of change in identity, place, and ideology.
The works he presents focuses on drawing as an event through live-art, performance, installation, video, telematic works, the Web, and projection technology. He is interested in how works ‘trace’ different conditions of change as an 'event'. That is to say, tracing where, when, and how persons, subjects and things can come together, live, insist, pass away––and still persist. There are events that change each of us throughout life. ‘Structural change’ matters in so far as inequality, racism and ideology can be – as an event – worked through and overcome. For Robert, events have come through experiences of immigration, two lost homes, displacement from family and community, a single-parent upbringing, and economic struggle. These experiences are echoed throughout the works by way of erasure, trauma and dispossession, but also the unexpected, joyful and incalculable surprise. The works trace different conditions, elements and behaviours that reflect struggle and change. The elements can appear as points, lines, planes, and shadows; the conditions reflect the body as something shared, between myself and others, one and many; the behaviours shaped by gravity, falling, resistance, space, time, action and decision. The writings are used, mainly, to work through ideas, contexts and issues that cut across aesthetics, philosophy, psychoanalysis, politics, ethics and culture.
Jenny Dunseath is an artist, Reader in Fine Art, and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art Sculpture at Bath School of Art. Since graduating from The Royal Academy of Art (2005) she has exhibited and held events in national and international venues, including; The Royal Academy of Art, Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Gig Munich, Tate Modern, Korean Cultural Centre, Gaana gallery Seoul, Flat Time House, OUTPOST and Spike Island. Publications include Artist Boss published by Wunderkammer Press, and her work features in various periodicals and journals.
Dunseath is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has taught across disciplines at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. She is an Academic Board Member at the Art Academy, London, and has been an External for Revalidation panels at various institutions around the UK. Dunseath is co-lead in the development of ‘Material/Pedagogy’ Research Group; a network of practice-based researchers that share a curiosity in understanding the education of artists. Current projects include ‘ACCELERATE: Accessible Immersive Learning for Art and Design’ an Erasmus+ funded project, coordinated by Professor Ian Gadd with partners from the UK, Ireland, Poland and Ukraine. This 2 year project aims to improve the teaching of art and design at higher education in Europe through the development of innovative methodologies, tools, platforms, and resources for accessible immersive learning.
Dr Michele Whiting
Coming from a successful, award winning career as an art director and creative director in advertising, Michele went on to study Fine Art at Bath Spa University to PhD level. Her practice is multi-disciplinary, focused on working in and with spaces and places, encompassing moving image, sound, drawing, and painting. In addition, she works as part of a collaborative studio ‘quilos and the windmill’ with Dr Linda Khatir. Her research interests, both primarily and continually, investigate issues of space place and site. Primary methods include durational walking and drawing, considering walking and memory as a way to question the role of visual memory back in the space of the drawing studio and considering the effects of drawing as a co-presence. A recent paper titled Landandmybody: body from the stillness drinking in, given at the International Association for the Study of Environment Space Place, at CT State University, USA, examined the effects of memory on drawing practice. It was published in Environment Space Place Journal, University of Minnesota Press. Michele regularly exhibits internationally. The most recent were Loss and Lucidity 1 Appleton Gallery, Lisbon Portugal, Loss and Lucidity 2 Fabrica Braço de Prata Lisbon Portugal 2019, curated by Diana Ali and a PADA residency in Lisbon, Portugal 2019.
Rachel Withers
Rachel Withers is an art writer. She studied History of Art at the Courtauld Institute, and Critical Fine Art Practice at Central St. Martin’s School of Art and Design. She has been researching and writing on contemporary art since the mid 1980s, with an emphasis on installation, photography, live art and film and video.
Since the late 1990s she has been a frequent contributor to Artforum International. She has also written for the Guardian, the New Statesman, Nu: the Nordic Art Review, and the Nordic daily Aftonbladet (amongst other publications) and contributed to the first Tate Modern Handbook, Phaidon’s Vitamin P and Vitamin 3D survey volumes, and assorted catalogues of the Venice and Sydney bienniales (2002, 2005 and 2011). In 2007 Dumont Verlag published her illustrated monograph on the Swiss artist Roman Signer. She has served on the juries of the Jerwood Sculpture Prize (2003), the Max Mara Art Prize for Women (2009-10) and the 2014 International Awards for Art Criticism. She is Secretary of the UK branch of AICA (the Association of International Critics of Art).
Rachel Withers has taught both art theory and art practice to undergraduate and graduate students in U.K. schools and colleges since the early 1990s, and during that time has participated in talks and discussions in diverse art institutions and locations around the world. She is presently Senior Lecturer in the History and Theory of Art and Design at Bath School of Design, Bath Spa University, U.K.
Tara Jetto
Tara Jetto practices works within and against the boundaries of the institution; particularly looking at her own relationship with art institutions and ‘high art’. She utilises a sense of discomfort in an exploration of historical and contemporary inclusivity and colonisation.
Much of her recent work uses trivial humour and storytelling as a method for provocation. These often include signage and labelling as a method of investigating human nature and engagement with both the political and the absurd. Tara attempts to navigate how far she can push those boundaries under the label of ‘art’; both literally and metaphorically painting the town red. She attempts to articulate a constant stream of strange ideas, only using the context of art institutions to prove it’s artistic value. Tara's work is multidisciplinary often utilising photography, poorly-executed Photoshop, cardboard and food stuffs.
Her work is inspired by artivist groups such as Voina and Tara employs tactics from graffiti campaigns such as that by Shepard Fairey in Obey. Creating a balance between bold text art and subtle symbols that could be misread as not art, she works with objects not technically considered art-objects to subvert them and pose the question of what art is to the audience as seen in Tara's Domestics series which has been taken to the streets of Bath.
Amy Butlin
(BSU Student graduated 2021)
We would like to extended our sincere gratitude to all the artists for their kind and generous donations. We would also like to specifically thank Poppy Clover, the Bath Spa University staff from the School of Art, Film and Media and the Bath School of Design for advice and support without which we would not have been able to hold the Hush Hush Art Auction 2022.
For the full list of all the artists and their artworks that have supported Joel's fund,
please visit the Gallery.
