THE SUFFRAGETTES : Millennial Rebels
16th - 23rd March
Artists: Nicholas Laborie & Claire Strickland
Preview 16th March 7 - 9pm

The Suffragettes : Millennial rebels is a collaboration between fine art photographer Nicolas Laborie and milliner Claire Strickland  about the suffrage movement.

The movement was a women's organisation in the late-19th and early-20th centuries which advocated the extension of the the right to vote in public elections, to women. The Suffragettes were militants who fought and even died for the cause.
The Suffragettes : Millennial rebels are presented in an historical photographic process created in the 19th century - wet plate collodion photography.

To celebrate the 100 years anniversary for the vote for women in UK - Representation of the People Act 1918 - Nicolas Laborie & Claire Strickland invited young millennial women to pose and reflect on what the anniversary means to them.
The young women, aged 16 to 20 years old are here represented as Suffragettes who fought for the right to vote for women in UK.
 
In The Suffragettes : Millennial rebels These young women wore vintage Victorian and Edwardian clothes but also unique creations : The hats were designed and created especially for the series by milliner Claire Strickland, looking at the history behind the movement as well as each militant including: Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Princess Sophia, Duleep Singh, Edith Bessie New, Sylvia, Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst, founder of the Women's Social and Political Union.

The Suffragettes : Millennial rebels exhibition which will run during International Women`s History Month 2018, consist of unique hats and wet plate collodion originals. 

Opening night: For the private view on the 16th March 2018, we will have at 7.30pm the Thursday Project String Quartet performing live compositions by Dame Ethel Smyth, an English composer and a member of the women`s suffrage movement who was emprisoned in Holloway Prison alongside Emmeline Pankhurst.
RSVP on Eventbrite here

Panel Discussion: A panel discussion will be on the Monday 19th March 7-9pm, talking about the project, celebrations, gender equality and how we can all make a difference.
Chaired by Art writer and editor Anna McNay
with Milliner Claire Strickland and Wet Plate Collodion Photographer Nicolas Laborie
with special guests : Historian and author Dr Diane Atkinson and Professional Storyteller Vanessa Woolf
RSVP on Eventbrite here
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​The 10th November is the opening of “Between the Sword and the Wall” at the Islington Arts factory. An intimate group show featuring the work of Samuel Eyles, Miguel Angel Ferrer and James Johnston - all of whom are alumni of The Cass school of Art. 

For this show the artists’ work is based on the repercussion of unconsciousness and the concept of margin and limitation. This work is created on a variety of different media, aiming to create an interesting and interactive visual journey for the viewer.  

Samuel’s paintings are characterised for their intimate visit into the human condition. The deconstruction of anatomy is apparent throughout the artist’s work as non-binary figures express their desire for “being human”; questioning the self and finding acceptance within one’s adopted skin. Surreal spaces, movement and abstracted figuration are some of the components that we can find in his paintings.      

Material is the main protagonist of James’ work. His focus is on the physical properties of the media and the interaction of the piece with the surroundings and the display. His very specific way of managing the space in the gallery makes the relation between his work, the visited space and the viewer a truly immersive experience.      

Miguel Angel bases his work in the narrative of social limitations, life stages and individual subconscious. To create his work, he uses a very different range of media: text, graphics, structures, accumulation of materials and 3D still-life. The purpose of the artist is to create a chaotic-minimalist space to engage with the curiosity of the viewer.   

The exhibition will be open from 10 to 17 November and all are welcome to the opening on 10 November from 6pm to 9pm.   

​Written on the skin is a self-curated group exhibition project by three emerging London-based artists. Taking as its point of departure the idea that the human body – with all the fragility, resilience and multiplicity of the flesh – is a site for expression and exploration; the exhibition introduces practices which variously explore notions of safety, difference, innocence and emotional exposé. The project brings together artworks across a range of media – including painting, sculpture, installation and text: these practices are in places complimentary but simultaneously distinct. Softly painted figurative renderings and autobiographical texts exploring queer sentimentalities contrast both installation works whimsically assembled using the detritus of domestic life, and figurative sculptures in the classical tradition which unpick traditional notions of perfection.

When considered together these works, in places visually complimentary yet occasionally oppositional in approach, sketch out a delicate and malleable narrative concerning the ideologies of vulnerability, femininity, sentimentality and feelings of minority and disassociation. These are expressive artists committed to translating their bodily and emotional experiences and for whom their concerns are, emotionally and metaphorically, written on the skin. Their texts – as paintings, sculptures, installations or writings - aim to further our imaginings of the internal architecture of the human condition.

HELENA COLLINS is interested in the artist’s body as muse. She works primarily with sculpture as a medium for the tentative and material exploration of form and context related to the physical and psychological vulnerabilities of the human body. For Collins breakages, slippages, separations and medicines represent a re-evaluation of traditional notions of the human form as represented in traditional canons of representation. She sees the act of sculpting as a ‘physical working through’ of her emotions.
ALEXANDRA LINFOOT is interested in the heightening of the domestic space through the constructs of Fine Art. Linfoot takes items, objects and materials which are commonplace and traditionally overlooked in domestic settings and elevates these through the act of assemblage, dismantling and redirecting traditional associations. In her sculptures, where peripheral elements usually orbit a singular ‘main event’, the everyday household object becomes a site for contemplation and reflection on the aesthetics of personal experience, femininity and the sanctity of the spaces we reserve for ‘home’.
JAMIE SHAW treats art practice as a realm of personal expression related to contemporary lived experience, believing that the personal is political. He works with intention to create intimate, sentimental musings concerned with expressing desire, longing, and failures in dreaming. His paintings and texts examine the discrepancies between sexuality and innocence, and examine the interstices between consumption and desire; marginality and complicity; kitsch and sublime. He counts life, difference, and innocence amongst his main inspirations. Shaw aims to create poetic encounters of a vision informed both by the minority queer experience and myths of the artist as ‘outsider’. The work expresses uniquely personal struggles in desire and constitutes a failed quest for ‘pink utopia’: He says “I work to create my own personal visual mythology: my gods live on a pink cloud.”

All artists graduated BA (hons) Mixed Media Fine Art from the University of Westminster in 2015.
www.jamieshawart.co.uk | alexandralinfoot.wix.com | hemcart.weebly.com

​Exposed
15th - 29th September 
Artists: Helen Stone, Caroline Wong, Michele Opoku-Taylor, Johanna Watts, Bridget Rampton, Alessandra Betollo, Ali Rideout, Fiona Land
Private View: 22nd September 7-9pm

​A group of 8 women artists studying contemporary portraiture at The Art Academy and endeavouring to make sense of this funny old world.

​The Tree of Here
14th - 21st July
Artists: Bea Banfi & Emanuela Marcu 
Preview: 14th July, 7-9pm
An installation created by the joint work of artists Bea Banfi and Emanuela Marcu - an experimentation, dialogue and meeting place of their visual languages. Emanuela's sculptural pieces will be inhabited by Bea's paintings, dislocated from the spaces where they were created.  This installation is an attempt to create a soulful connection, that breaks the shell of material appearance and reveals is deeper source, its inner life.

​Summer Salon 2017
Private View: 2nd June, 6.30pm—9.30pm
Exhibition: 2nd—23rd June 2017
 
Islington Arts Factory celebrates 10 years of Summer Salon.

This June our flagship exhibition programme Summer Salon celebrates ten glorious years, during which more than 800 artists have shown over 1500 works of art in our two beautiful galleries.  Since 2007 our aim has been to offer an open and inclusive platform for home grown talent, where amateur artists can exhibit alongside national and international professional artists.
Summer Salon was inspired by the 18th Century French salons where people would meet to discuss the arts and exchange ideas, encouraging new contrasts, comparisons and conversations around the work.

"We are delighted to be celebrating a decade of Summer Salon" , says Eleanor Pearce,  Islington Arts Factory’s Director of Art and Summer Salon Curator, “Summer Salon perfectly embodies the Arts Factory’s ethos of creating an atmosphere where everyone feels welcome to participate and express themselves"

This year will be no exception as we invite more artists than ever to hang their work in our galleries. There will be more than 85 artists and over 200 artworks on show,  including contributions from our affiliated charities: New Art Studio, who work with refugees and asylum seekers; MENCAP, who provide inspirational classes for adults with learning disabilities, Art Box who work with local disabled artists and local Carnival workshop company, Glorious Backstage Arts.

As part of this year’s tenth anniversary celebrations, regular Summer Salon exhibitor  Heather Carol has gifted her painting Carpe Diem to Islington Arts Factory, which will be auctioned in the lead up to the exhibition, with all proceeds going to support our busy and exciting the children's art programme, MakeArt.

To place a bid on Heather's work email art@islingtonartsfactory.org

​How Shall I Get Elephants To Stay
28th April - 19th May 2017
Artist Gaynor Perry.
​Preview 28th April 7 - 9pm
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How Shall I Get Elephants to Stay is an exhibition of the artwork featured in Gaynor's book of dreams. Here you will see paintings, photographs and sculptures expressing the artist's subconscious reality, guiding the empathic bonds she forms with the Animal Kingdom and Mother Nature.