Andrew Gillespie (b. 1984, Birmingham) is a contemporary artist based in Birmingham. His practice spans print and sculpture, with works often responding to found and appropriated imagery and objects. Most recently, he has explored printing graphic imagery onto concrete. These small fragments, emblazoned with often cliched texts and logos, recall urban detritus and museum artefacts, latent mementos of different times and landscapes.

Alongside this, he collaborates with Andrew Lacon on Recent Activity, an itinerant curatorial project that stages events and exhibitions across the city. The mainstay of this collaboration has been Nomadic Vitrine, a project which invites artists to respond to a travelling glass display cabinet. There have been eight iterations of Nomadic Vitrine, including a recent presentation by Sean Edwards at Birmingham City University.

For his Feeney Fellowship, he will explore mold making and casting, developing a new body of work around clothing and fabric. Fuelled by research into discarded clothes and found surfaces, Andrew will explore how to transform and elevate these objects, reproducing them in plasters and resins. Parallel to this, the fellowship will fund a series of professional mentoring sessions to critique and contextualise his development.

awgillespie.com
Andrew's final report

Joanne Masding is a Birmingham-based artist working in sculpture and video. Recent exhibitions include ‘image, music, text’ at IMT Gallery London (2016), ‘stuffs wander off, a shape steps in’ at Two Queens, Leicester (2016), and ‘Birmingham Show’ Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2015). Joanne has been artist in residence at 501 Artspace in Chongqing, China, and is currently artist in residence with Research and Cultural Collections at University of Birmingham.

Joanne says:

"I am very pleased to be able to use the Feeney Fellowship to develop my metalworking skills. The Fellowship will enable me to undertake a number of metalworking courses, to gain hands-on experience of working with new processes, techniques and tools, and invest in new equipment and materials that I can bring into my studio practice.

"My work is made to consider the way we value, acquire and produce objects, and in recent work I have used the museum and its display mechanisms as a useful example for thinking about these ideas. It is this area of work in particular that I am interested in bringing in new knowledge and skills. Working with a range of metals I’ll experiment with making armatures, stands and display structures using bending and joining methods to make structures that are integral parts of the work, rather than purely functional items. The Feeney Fellowship will also support me in undertaking research into museum display, and I’m excited about being able to take on new knowledge and ideas in this area while simultaneously developing my technical skills."

joannemasding.com
Joanne's final report