Tactual Explorations

Tom Ainsworth

For Tom Ainsworth, the tactile artwork exploits and encapsulates the tactile sense: It evokes a combination of sensations that stimulate the individual’s imagination. Tom feels that the potential for the tactile artwork has not yet been fully realised. Texture is generally used in design merely as a complementary aesthetic and, therefore, its potential as the dominant mode of perception has been prematurely dismissed. Tom wishes to push the boundaries of the tactile artwork and establish it as a respected medium in its own right.

Carolyn Alexander

Carolyn Alexander specialised in Illustration, whilst studying Visual Communication at the Glasgow School of Art and focused on concept driven design. Carolyn’s most recent (ongoing) project “Secrets for the Blind” has developed as an exploration of the use and manipulation of the senses. The main aim of this project is to create art that can be appreciated by the blind as well as the sighted. Carolyn has designed a three dimensional still life that can be handled by both blind and fully sighted persons, but which is inscribed with Braille secrets that only the blind can decipher.

Louise Atkinson

Louise Atkinson is an artist based at Patrick Studios in Leeds. She works in sculpture and installation using a variety of media including paper, textile media and techniques and new technology. The influence for her work derives from ideas about identity and the human condition, including psychoanalytic and transhumanist theory. She is especially interested in the ‘feminine’ qualities of traditional and craft-based materials and techniques within the context of installation.

She regularly collaborates with other artists and is currently developing a number of projects including several new technology installations, and a site and context based mapping project about cultural identity and food, which will be exhibited at Situation Leeds in 2007. Through specialising in installation she produces multi-sensory experiences with a tactile or audio element as a way of making art more accessible to people with visual impairments.

She regularly leads art workshops for a range of ages and is due to exhibit at the Berlin Art Fair and County Hall Gallery in London at the end of this year.

Lynn Cox

As well as exhibiting in the Tactual Explorations exhibition, Lynn is displaying a multi-sensory artwork in BlindArt’s Sense and Sensuality 2006 Exhibition to be held at the Bankside Gallery in London from 14 September to 8 October.
Since completing an MA in Fine Art at Wimbledon School of Art, she has exhibited nationally and internationally in London, Glasgow and San Francisco.
Lynn’s art is informed, but not dominated by her own visual impairment and its associated access work and equality/awareness training. Her mission is to elevate the senses, perceptions and language to a higher status, which is usually reserved for the purely visual.

Deborah Gardner

On gaining a Masters Degree at Newcastle University, Deborah Gardner won a British Council Scholarship to Australia. She then completed the Durham Cathedral Residency and became a member of a London-based artists’ co-operative. She is currently Lecturer in Fine Art at Leeds University. Her work has been exhibited in both group and solo exhibitions in the UK, Europe and overseas. Recent group exhibitions include work at the Ragged School: Museum of the East End, London (2005) and the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture (2006). As part of the artists’ group That which is Near, she has completed projects in Brussels and Vienna (2004) and is due to exhibit at the Ebersberg Kunstverein in Germany in 2007.
The prevailing concern in her work is how sculpture may point to an experience of the body and the physical world. The research continuously draws on a correspondence between ideas of embodiment and the material engagement and tactility of form within sculpture

Isil Onol

Isil Onol is a graphic artist and information designer living in London. She has been freelancing as a print and web designer and a software instructor, and has worked as a part-time lecturer at the University of Huddersfield teaching studio skills, graphic design principals and graphics software to Multimedia and Virtual Reality students. Isil is currently undertaking a PhD research with the University of Huddersfield. Funded by HEFCE, she has been researching haptic interactions in museums since September 2004. She completed her MSc in Smart Design at the Department of Creative Technologies of the same institution in 2003, and her BA in Graphic Information Design at the University of Westminster in London in 2000. Before going back to academia for her previous master’s program, Isil worked as an Interactive Designer at the BBC Creative Services for 3 years, mainly producing character illustrations, developing dynamic web content and taking part in Interactive TV projects.

Murat Ozkasim

Murat Ozkasim is a photographer and printmaker, he lives in Leeds, where he operates a photography studio, this commercial work has led to long term assignments in New York and Miami.
He was born in Turkey and has lived in England for twenty-five years, as an artists his practice reflects a deep interest in inter-cultural harmony. He has exhibited widely in the U.K. and abroad.
His partcipation in this project has created a first opportunity to not only employ three dimensions but to research the rich potential of the tactile in the audience’s reception of the work and its underlying concepts through direct interaction.

Megha Rajguru

Megha Rajguru’s artworks are visual experiments exploring the relationship between humans and objects. Life and death of objects and mechanised people are ideas that loosely form her work. Megha works across a variety of mediums; the still 2D, kinetic 3D and film. Megha’s work invites its audience to interact with the art object. The space around the artworks is a strong contributing factor in the meaning it emanates. It generates specific human behaviour. Movement in a temple is ritualistic and in a museum it is controlled. The space almost becomes a testing ground for certain human-object interactions. Megha’s artworks become alive with meaning when they are placed in certain environments.

John Swindells

John Swindells graduated from Chelsea College of Art in 1998 and continues to produce sculpture specialising in cast bronze. His work is held in many private collections and he has recently been commissioned to produce several public sculptures. He also contributes to TV and film and hopes to soon produce his own Art documentary programmes. For the past three years hes tutored Sculpture, Drawing and Painting at the Slade School of Fine Art. John Swindells currently lives in London.

Zoha Zokaie

Zoha Zokaie is a 24-year-old female artist from Iran. Having finished her first degree in Textile Engineering in her home town Tehran in 2004, Zoha moved to London to continue her higher education. She is currently an MFA student in Textiles at Goldsmiths College University of London.
Growing up after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, Zoha is the child of contrary forces. On the one hand she has had first hand experience of war and censorship. On the other hand Zoha has a long heritage of mystics, poetry, miniature painting, turquoise tiles, domes, carpets and courtyards.
Zoha says that the new millennium has not offered her much. The planet is in a serious danger. Technology is on the side of power and money. The overwhelming flow of information numbs her senses. Through her art Zoha tries to envision an alternative world: A world of physical engagement of senses of simple aesthetic pleasures in touch and vision. Nostalgia for Zoha is not a disease but a real inspiration.

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Workshop Facilitators
Please see above for short biographies of Tom Ainsworth, Carolyn Alexander, Louise Atkinson and Lynn Cox.

Caglar Kimyoncu

Caglar Kimyoncu is a digital and video artist. For the past eight years, he has been focusing on collaborating with other artists using a variety of digital media, in projects which included website design, scenography, video and photo documentary, and script development. He is also a curator. In his role as Co-Founder and Director of the London Disability Film Festival, Caglar coordinated the festival for seven years. He has a deep interest in alternative representations of excluded voices: voices perceived as “other” from a sexual, gender, disability or ethnic perspective. Caglar is also interested in working processes that challenge traditional structures. With the support of an Artsadmin Bursary for Digital Artists, Caglar is currently developing an interactive web-based project based on the theme of power dynamics in sexual relationships, particularly within institutional settings.

Amy Hirst

Amy Hirst is a theatre Designer and Puppet maker, based at Atom Studios, Bradford. Amy graduated in 2002 with BA (hons) Theatre Design from Nottingham Trent University. Her recent projects include Design for Romeo and Juliet, a co-production between Act and Kala Sangam, The Priestley, Bradford. I Love West Leeds Festival, an interactive installation, transforming a garden shed into a prehistoric world for young children to explore. Exhibitions include ‘Lost at Sea’ at the Clock Tower Gallery, Sheffield; ‘Nothing Obvious’ Atom Studios group show, The Priestley, Bradford; ‘Urban Invasion’ (group show) Matilda Arts, Sheffield. Amy Hirst undertook European Training Services placement in Venice (mask making) and completed “Puppets in Prague”, a course in traditional Czech puppetry.