Transitions are important and often key moments in our lives: as we move from one set of circumstances to another; as we grow up, as we take charge of our thoughts and actions. None are greater than the transition between life and death and our attempts to understand it. Creative minds often hijack this by trying to look at life and the world around us from other angles, other perspectives. Often, having reached a block in the creative process and the perceived demise of ideas that follows, the creative practitioner will look tangentially at what they do and take a leap of faith into unchartered territory and so often they end up dancing around new works and ideas and create compelling work that helps us all look at difficult circumstances afresh.

WAKE, an exhibition conceived and developed by studio artists at AirSpace, takes this idea to explore works recently produced or specifically created to offer a visual exploration of death to life. 11 artists who work in the studios above the AirSpace Gallery use various mediums including sculpture, drawing, ceramics, print, comic books, and video performances to explore mortality. These artists offer a unique perspective on difficult subjects, inviting us to reflect on the beauty and fragility of life and death.

Come and experience this thought-provoking and engaging exhibition that showcases the power of art to transcend boundaries and connect us all. It won’t answer all those difficult questions but, like a good wake, will offer reflection, sadness, joy, and maybe a knowing smile.
- Terry Shave, AirSpace Board, 2023

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THE ARTISTS and WORKS

REBECCA DAVIES & ANNA FRANCIS
Anna Francis and Rebecca Davies share work commissioned by Archifringe 2021 - which has never been seen outside of the Architecture Festival. This body of work draws on their experience as practitioners operating across the Civic Arts sphere.
Exploring notions of governance and the frustrations encountered by communities in relating to hostile development schemes which ignore the fabric of a place; these short films aim to raise debate around where power sits in order to draw on lived experience of these processes, to then critique the status quo and ask who should really decide how things need to change?

The 25 minute looped video of clips of theArchifringeTV performance videos will be further animated by a special guest performance at the opening event evening with ArchifringeTV hosts Bill & Hayley.

NATALIA KASPRZYCKA
A Certain Ratio is a material investigation into a place which is inner, emerged from grief and sensations of being stranded, in between, in process. The format of a test tile, used in ceramics to observe the development and performance of glazes is repurposed here to create a visual spectrum representing a number of psychological states. On the opposite sides of this spectrum are glazes composed of materials from the artist’s native home in Poland and current home in England, with the tiles in between composed of varying proportions of the two.Their changing ratios affect chemistry and surface creating a visual narrative to an internal process.

KIDDA KINSEY
Good Grief Publication A dying man’s last wish: for his friends to create a show about death. Will it be subtle? Will it be sophisticated? Probably not, but it’s his funeral. Literally.
Multi award-winning physical comedy company Ugly Bucket process the death of a friend in the only way they know how – through a kinetic maelstrom of outrageous clowning, personal testimony and a thumping techno soundtrack.
This edition of Good Grief is richly illustrated by artist Kidda Kinsey, in an explosion of whimsical art that brings the show sharply from the stage onto the page. It was published to coincide with the production at Underbelly Cowgate, Edinburgh, in August 2022.

ANNA MACDONALD
Progression (freestyle) and Progression (walking)
To make Progression (freestyle) and Progression (walking) Anna Macdonald invited an entire primary school to move through a free-standing doorway, firstly just walking and secondly moving in any way they wanted. At the doorway, the children were invited to think about their answer to a question that is often asked of young people: what do you want to be when you are older? The children were organised from the youngest to the oldest and as the films progress, the children get taller and taller. It was recorded using a single static shot and continues the artist’s fascination with the relationship between movement, time and progression.

The work was originally commissioned by Queens Hall Digital and Anna would like to thank all the children and staff at Pikemere Primary School, Cheshire and assistant artists Paige Harrison and Ryan Wilkinson for their generous work on this project.

MSDMEANAR
Dear Dondi
A celebration of multispecies relationships. The Menopausal Ani-MaLady ritualistically demonstrates love, connection and care we have and show others in her exploration of grief and mourning. Dear Dondi provides an opportunity for visitors to pause and contemplate and remember lost relationships we have had with other animals.
In Good Mourning Closet there is an opportunity to take a moment to remember your lost loved ones. Take a seat and weep while you consider the joy you brought each other, the connection you felt, their preciousness, and your grief. You can light a candle in remembrance, write their name in chalk on the memorial plinth, and leave a message in the ‘Black Book of Animal Love’.
This work is a tribute to our boy Dondiego de la Vera, brother to Mabel, Michael, Percy, and the late Vera, Clarence, and Arthur.

ALEX NORCOP
Revolting Beasties is a newly formed creative, social and political project instigated by Alex. It is a fluid multifaceted concept and creative action that passionately seeks the death of our current capitalist oppressive system. While exploring possible alternatives, striving for freedom, equality, satisfaction and pure creativity. Planting seeds in the ashes of old, to grow a better world. A new world of play, joy and art. By developing new folktales and rituals, using performance, interventions and publications this work will engage with local communities and current resistance movements. The Revolting Beasties are anthropomorphic creatures that encompass everyone who seeks change. They dance on the dirt of old.

PETER R SMITH
Lost Voices is a two-part structural installation. The first part is an explosion of computer internals, glass, vials and electrical light debris covering a radius of roughly 4 to 5ft and climbing the heights of one corner. This is a large conglomerate of disposable chaos forming an ever-expanding bubble climbing towards the point of no return, with echoes of faint voices and fading lights in the distance of the internals reflecting as the minor apparitions of what may have been.
The title Lost Voices reflects those without choice, the murmuring of words that can’t be or won’t be heard by those who possess the control.
The second part is a Cherub of the in Techs. Without power the deity of love watches on but cannot alter events. Is all modern techno now, all wired up to report the next headline, ready to orate the latest salvo.

BLYTHE TAYLOR
Curfeu
A reference to the historical use of curfews, reflecting on the idea that apparatus of the state, be that religious or political, can be utilised to embed social norms and influence dissent. A ‘couvre-feu’ - which is Old French for ‘cover fire’ is a ceramic or metal object placed over a smouldering fire upon hearing the curfew bell, rung from town and city centres as a means to prevent house fires during the night. A protective halo surrounds the fire cover, decorated with crockets resembling the church spire at St James’s church, Louth, the tallest medieval spire in England and starting place of a popular rebellion in 1537.



ALICE THATCHER
Consequences in Clay
A 1.5 hour session in the gallery space, inviting exhibiting artists and the public to discuss the displayed work and key themes using clay as a tool for conversation. Participants will use explorative techniques and prompts to create consequences in clay. Using a selection of key words taken from common themes in the displayed works - ie. ritual, progression, tribute, time - alongside a selection of ceramic techniques including roll and decorate, build and join, press and attach; guests will respond to their selections and add to an evolving, collaborative artwork using clay.

THE PORTLAND INN PROJECT
We at The Portland Inn Project are writing a 100 Year Plan with and for our community. Just over 500 households make up the Portland Street triangle, a traditionally working class, but increasingly culturally diverse neighbourhood that sits beside a derelict brownfield & 2 large industrial plants producing sound & air pollution.
In the 2019 Indices of Deprivation, the neighbourhood was cited as being within the top 10% most deprived in the UK, creating additional barriers to work and quality of life for people who live here. A combination of factors means that the neighbourhood has been marginalised for a number of years, and has often been left out of decision making which affect residents locally. Through the work that we are doing, we are forging ways to be in charge of our own decision making, and to make plans for ourselves.
A 100 year plan can be a physical and geographical plan for a community landscape but it works just as well as a concept of change over time. Our 100 Year Plan centres around making our neighbourhood a better place to live for people and planet.
This series of posters will soon be rolled out across the city, as part of the 100 Year Plan campaign, launching its website and the renovation of our new cultural community space.
Photography : Felicity Crawshaw
Graphic Design : Dan Muir

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ARTISTS' BIOGRAPHIES

REBECCA DAVIES & ANNA FRANCIS
Rebecca Davies is from London and lives in Stoke On Trent. She has a deeply embedded and collaborative practice that crosses illustration, design, performance and event. Her work explores the role of art in making change, as a device and platform, to represent and communicate complex stories and politics. She has run participation projects with Turner Contemporary, Tate, New Town Culture, and was lead artist of the Whitechapel Gallery Community Workshops for 3 years. Rebecca and artist Anna Francis set up The Portland Inn Project CIC in 2016 in a residential area of Stoke on Trent, working in collaboration with other artists, arts organisations and residents to improve their community and renovate an old pub building. The project advocates for people-led change, and champions the importance of art in leading that change, and in cooperation with public services.
@rebeccamariadavies

Anna Francis is an artist and researcher whose work aims to create space to discuss and reframe city resources, through participatory art interventions. She creates situations for herself, the public and other artists to explore places differently. In recent years the interventions which Anna has worked on focus on the city of Stoke-on-Trent, and use an action research process to recognise untapped resources, plan responses to disused sites in the city, take action to change the way these sites are viewed, and potentially, make changes, which can be temporary and sometimes permanent. Through this, Anna aims to gain an understanding of the role of artists, arts organisations and communities in the development of places.
@annafrancisart/

NATALIA KASPRZYCKA
Natalia Kasprzycka is an artist exploring the themes of circulation and transformation of matter. Using craft skills as research tools, she works in a site-specific way, investigating the notion of ‘place’ through materials, their origins and current context.
@natajkasprzycka

KIDDA KINSEY
Kidda Kinsey is a stoke based author and illustrator - whose work explores the extraordinary in the ordinary. Real life anecdotes obtained from chinwagging, reminiscing or earwigging spark fireworks of characters, story plots and worlds, that furthermore reflect and expose the collective vulnerability and humility of simply existing.
@kiddakinsey

ANNA MACDONALD
Anna Macdonald is a dance artist/scholar whose work moves between moving image, live art and contemporary performance practice. Her work focuses on the relationship between the body, time and affect and uses film to expose the resonance of simple movements, such as, moving from ‘here to there’, ‘holding’ or ‘getting slower’. Her work is regularly exhibited internationally in both festival and gallery settings and has generated interdisciplinary findings in the fields of health, science and law, within large-scale projects funded by AHRC, Arts Council England and Wellcome Trust. She is currently Practitioner in Residence (2023) at Institute Advanced Legal Studies, School of Advanced Studies, University of London and works part-time as Course Leader for MA Performance: Society at UAL: Central St Martins, London.
@annamacdonaldart_/

MSDMEANAR
Msdmeanar is an artist that uses a range of different materials and characters. I often work under my performance name of MsDMeanar. In this character I have been playing around with performative acts, looking for ways to transform myself during my menopause. This has led me to explore notions of animalistic behaviours, and the power of rituals that help people improve health or make change in their lives.
@msdmeanar

ALEX NORCOP
Alex Norcop is an artist and chef who produces illustrations, actions, stories and costume that challenge current political and social structures. Exploring alternative forms of organising society, economics and life on planet earth. Focusing on issues of class, inequality, oppression, land and cultivation and human expression. He studied at Leeds School of Art and graduated in 2011 and has since been involved in creative and political collectives. Also developing knowledge of and passion for food which is now interlinked with his artistic practice. Alex’s work is sometimes challenging and other times playful. Always aiming to stand from a position of compassion and progress.
@nowtprint

PETER R SMITH
Through his art practice of reclamation and remoulding Peter R Smith creates artworks that reflect both the sense of living entities next to those of decaying debris of the after events, a performance forever changing and adapting to changes of time. The form can have numerous functions before assuming its final costume. Fascinations with generic technology and how artificial intelligence could reveal the closets within oneself, and what consequences may occur to both ourselves and our environment?
Curiosity towards how social media being controlled by a chosen few has taken over a great part of our lives, we live within a society of the mass rather than the miniscule and we as individuals cannot live without the mass of decay? Therefore it seems appropriate that the old and decaying become the drying skin for the circuitry to birth the intestines of a multitude of communication devices through tares in the fabric.

BLYTHE TAYLOR
Blythe Taylor is an artist based at AirSpace studios in Stoke-on-Trent, England. She studied filmmaking at Kingston University London and graduated in 2015. Her work concerns issues around women's oppression, political resistance and social change. A multi-faceted artist working with moving image, ceramics and printmaking. Gardening has become a large influence in her work as an artist and has become an inseparable element of her practice; sowing, planting, harvesting, storing and preserving food which have been grown on her small allotment plot in Stoke. Her most recent work is inspired by 18th century English slipware pottery and with a fascination of the late medieval and early modern period in England. In 2021 alongside fellow artists and activists she co-founded The Radical Art Collective - an anti-capitalist group formed to create politically motivated work to agitate and organise revolutionary change by holding spoken word workshops, joining picket lines and holding anti-establishment performances.
@jasperbaba

ALICE THATCHER
Alice Thatcher is a ceramic artist working with clay and people in Stoke-on-Trent. Her practice focuses on community, clay, people and place. She believes in the connections we can make using ceramic processes and is passionate about engaging with others whilst using clay as a tool for conversation.

THE PORTLAND INN PROJECT
The Portland Inn Project is an artist and community led arts organisation in Stoke On Trent. Our mission is to create an arts and community led organisation that makes vital change in our area. We galvanise and deliver community cohesion, economic, social and cultural development in the streets where we live. We believe in the power of art: as a tool in communicating our story; representing the needs of people here and creating space for communities to come together and learn. We advocate for people-led change, and champion the importance of creative and cultural activity in leading that change.
@theportlandinnprojectcic