Current Artist Mentors' Bios
Speaking fantasy to power, Louise Ashcroft’s work creates situations and stories which unravel contemporary culture, remixing primary and secondary research in order to speculate alternative ways of seeing and being; giving voice to hidden histories and experimental futures. Recent projects include: a residency at OOF Gallery making works about Women’s football; a collaboration with an evolutionary biologist at UCL; a project about waste tips in Exeter; and nursery rhymes about childlessness for a show at Kunstmuseum St.Gallen. www.louiseashcroft.org
Adelaide Bannerman is a curator and curatorial director at commercial gallery Tiwani Contemporary. Bannerman has been working curatorially on productions that include commissions, exhibitions, and events, since 1998. She graduated from the MA Fine Art Administration and Curatorship programme in 2001, and has formally developed her thinking and practice with agencies prioritising and promoting global contemporary artistic practice and critical perspectives, from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean and its diasporas, and more recently Australia. Pursuing these objectives, she has worked with the following organisations: Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts, 2001-2017), International Curators Forum (2007-2021), and Autograph (2011-2016).
John Eng Kiet Bloomfield is Executive Director of The GAP Arts Project, in Balsall Heath, Birmingham. After relocating to the city in 2021, he is delighted to have found a role working at his neighbourhood arts organisation, one embedded in multiple communities and ecologies.
Previously, he was Director (Maternity Cover) (2024) at Peer, London and Senior Curator of Programmes at Wysing Arts Centre (2016–2023), where he worked to centre artists through the organisation’s programme of residencies, exhibitions, festivals and digital commissions. At Wysing, he played a pivotal role in shaping an increasingly inclusive and accessible agenda for Wysing and has managed the Syllabus artist development programme since 2017, securing the programme’ future until 2034 through a landmark funding agreement.
John has also worked at Black Dog Publishing, developed independent projects with Arcadia Missa, BFI, Flat Time House, Tate Film and MOT and has worked for artist Isaac Julien. He is Co-Chair of CVAN West Midlands and a trustee of Arts Catalyst.
Emma Edmondson is an artist and organiser from Southend-on-Sea. Studying and graduating during the 2008 financial crash alternative economies, precarity and utopian community are at the centre of her research and practice. She works with sculpture, print, text and education and is interested in how recessions and austerity shape how we survive creatively.
In 2016 she set up TOMA an accessible artist-run education model which is currently the only postgrad-ish level art programme in Essex after all others were stopped by their host universities. TOMA sits outside the traditional institutional model and was born of and been shaped by austerity and the decades long businessification and dismantling of creative education. These are the politics that bought TOMA into existence. Recently she has been processing raw clay dug from the ground and exploring local land rights to create sculptures that sit on the ground they were made from, marking out little know public rights of way to encourage local people’s use of them. She always works collaboratively believing in collaboration over competition and the power of people coming together to change sector policy, systems and rules.
Kim McAleese is a curator originally from Belfast, now based in Scotland. She is currently working as Director of Edinburgh Art Festival, and previously was Programme Director of Grand Union, Birmingham. Her practice is centred around sharing, listening, supporting, caring, conversing and exchanging.
She was an Associate Lecturer at University of Birmingham, is Vice-Chair of Outburst Queer Arts Festival and has served on the board of New Art West Midlands and Visual Artist Ireland. In 2021 she was on the jury to nominate and choose the winner of the Turner Prize, and this year was on the jury to select the artist for the British Pavilion at Venice, 2024.
Celeste McEvoy (she/her) is Assistant Curator of Contemporary British Art at Tate Britain. Her work supports the contemporary exhibitions programme, museum displays, and acquisitions. Celeste McEvoy is both an artist and curator. As a practicing ceramic artist, she has a particular interest in ceramics within contemporary art practice.
Alongside her curatorial role, Celeste McEvoy is also Co-Director of 3D Women, a charity arts platform that champions dialogue and visibility for women and non-binary artists. She coordinates a free annual programme of events for the 3D Women community.
Katie Simpson is a curator from the East Midlands and holds the position of Senior Curator at Nottingham Contemporary. Her research interests align with socially, politically and environmentally engaged practices that explore alternatives to dominant narratives and methodologies. Her practice is guided by curiosity, encounters and openness with an aim to dismantle hierarchies of, and access to, art and culture. She has experience of commissioning ambitious and experimental artistic projects and public programming, as well as organising and nurturing artistic residencies and community engaged projects. In a freelance capacity, she mentors and supports artists with funding, grant, and residency application writing, and with the development of artistic and curatorial projects.
Previously, she held the positions of Curator of Exhibitions at Nottingham Contemporary, Studio Manager & Exhibitions Hub Curator within the Art Department at Goldsmiths (London), Co-Director at not-for-profit art organization Jupiter Woods, (London) and Curatorial Assistant at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art (London). In 2020 she participated in the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s YCRP (Young Curator’s Residency Programme) co-curating the exhibition Waves Between Us in Turin. She received a BFA in Visual Culture from the University of Brighton (2013) and MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths (2018).
Hannah Wallis is an artist, curator and d/Deaf activist, originally from Leicester. Having previously worked within the exhibitions team at Nottingham Contemporary and the programme team at Wysing Arts Centre, Hannah now works as co-programme director at Grand Union, Birmingham alongside access consultation work. In 2020-2021, Hannah completed a curatorial residency at Wysing Arts Centre as part of Future Curator's Network – a programme supporting the career development of D/deaf and Disabled curators in partnership with DASH – and now serves as associate advisor to the programme.
Committed to the long-term application of accessibility practices and the working rights of artists, Hannah has worked with Aural Diversity, Deafroots, British Art Network, the Victoria & Albert Museum, National Gallery, London, Eye Film Museum, Amsterdam and Voices in the Gallery; and currently serves as Trustee for a-n Artists Information Company and Collective Text as well as sitting on the advisory panel for Two Queens Gallery, Leicester.
With a practice that explores the nuances of communication and sensory deprivation, Hannah's work sits at the intersection of access, equity and embodied transformation.
Collaborating under the moniker of Dyad Creative with artist Théodora Lecrinier since 2014, and supported by organisations including a-n, East Street Arts, National Centre for Writing, Kettle’s Yard, and Arts Council England, Hannah has previously led residency programmes and learning projects, developed interactive commissions and curatorial research, as well as managing several temporary artist-led spaces.
Sam Will is Assistant Director at Sadie Coles HQ. After graduating from Central Saint Martins with a BA in Fine Art, he worked for various arts organisations including Hauser & Wirth and Bold Tendencies before starting at Sadie Coles HQ in 2018. At the gallery, he is a salesperson and an artist liaison, and for the past three years he has also programmed its project space, The Shop, inviting emerging galleries and curators to exhibit.
Previous mentors have included Ama Josephine Budge, Benjamin Cook, Lucy Day, Anne Duffau, Mary Doyle, Ceri Hand, Evan Ifekoya, Janice McLaren, Chris Rawcliffe, Soraya Rodriguez, Amanprit Sandhu, Borbála Soós, Bolanle Tajudeen and Jessica Vaughan.
