Old Yoga Centre, Smithfield Road (next to M&S)
6th September-28th September 2024, open on Market Days.
ART-efact Art Residency is part of Love Oswestry’s Summer of Art programme, celebrating creativity and culture in Oswestry from July through to September 2024. Following the success of ART-efact in 2023, ART-efact is delighted to be back in its second year.
This time, 4 talented local artists have worked with the town council archives, town museum and met with local experts to explore Oswestry’s history and stories. Their work will be presented in an exciting exhibition from 6-28 September. The exhibition will feature poetry and audio which explore the theme of love and is based on the Gilbert and Gorden love letters. And another aspect of the exhibition, Art Across the Borders, focusses on paintings, drawings and installations that reflect Oswestry’s unique border town identity.
The exhibition will form a big part of Oswestry’s Heritage Open Days programme, with the theme of ‘Routes, Networks, Connections’. Throughout the residency, the artists have delivered public workshops which have allowed local people to shape and inform their work.
ART-efact is funded by the UK Government as a part of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and is delivered in partnership with Oswestry Cultural Connections.
ART-efact artists
Project Leader Holly Maries has a background of working independently and collaboratively in the arts, most recently in facilitating the education and events programme at Hauser and Wirth, Somerset. The four selected artists in residence are: Emmy Clarke, Martha Clark, Megan Hayward, and Robert Lawton
Emmy Clarke is a queer, autistic poet living in Oswestry. Past exhibitions include ‘Taking Up Space’ at Contact Theatre, Manchester and ‘9-5’ at Contemporary Arts and Learning, Herne Hill, London. She is the founder of Changeling, a magazine for children featuring solely neurodivergent artists and writers and as a part of this has worked with delivering children’s art workshops at The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.
Martha Clark is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Oswestry. Martha studied at the University of the Arts London 2015-2018 and has since continued her art practice in time-based media alongside printing, painting and drawing. She has a monthly radio show with her art collective Quadruped Collective for the radio station RTM.FM based in London. Martha is known locally for her window paintings and installations.
Megan Hayward is an award-winning creative audio artist and Podcast Producer from Oswestry. Her piece ‘Down On The Farm’ (exploring the mental health crisis in farming) won the 2022 Charles Parker Prize and was featured on BBC Radio 4 in their New Storytellers programme. In 2023 Megan was named as one of PodPod’s Faces To Watch and her audio work has featured on BBC Radio Shropshire as well as at international audio festivals.
Robert Lawton is a painter with a studio space in the centre of Oswestry. His paintings employ source material from the everyday, books, film, archival material, the internet, Art History and personal experiences. Rob primarily uses painting to explore themes of identity and language. Rob has practiced tutoring for 10 years including school workshops and the paintable workshop at Qube.
