Sculpture Galleries of the Not Future
Kerry Harker:
Dr Kerry Harker is a curator, researcher and writer. She has worked in the visual arts sector for over 25 years, predominantly in the north of England. In 2006 she co-founded Project Space Leeds (with Pippa Hale and Diane Howse) which led to the founding of The Tetley centre for contemporary art in 2013, where she was inaugural Artistic Director until 2015. She was then interim Director of The Art House in Wakefield (2015-16); and Founder and Artistic Director of the East Leeds Project (2017-25).
Her PhD at the University of Leeds (2023) focused on artist-led initiatives and processes of institutionalisation. In 2023-24 she co-curated, with Dr Anna Douglas, the touring exhibition If Not Now, When? Generations of Women in Sculpture in Britain 1960-2023 (The Hepworth Wakefield and Saatchi Gallery, London).
She is currently Bridget Riley Art Foundation Fellow at the University of Leeds, working with the archive of artist and educator, Maurice de Sausmarez.
Holly Rowan Hesson:
Holly Rowan Hesson is a visual artist based in Leeds. She makes installations, sculpture and photographic works responding to her interests in how architecture, the built environment and physical space are experienced. She often explores sites in flux, transition or hiatus, working intuitively with the space as a material in itself as well as a container in which to make an intervention.
She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally over the last thirteen years since completing an MA in Contemporary Fine Art. Solo exhibitions include Echo, commissioned by Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival; New Work at & Model, Leeds and Assembly at Bankley Gallery, Manchester awarded after winning the Bankley Gallery Open. Hesson was invited to exhibit with Paul Huxley RA by Royal Society of Sculptors for The Line London; selected for the inaugural Coventry Biennial of Contemporary Art and presented by Castlefield Gallery at The Manchester Contemporary.
She is currently working on a new project, My Life in Concrete, adding a personal twist to her ongoing post-war architecture research to make a large body of new work. She brings her broad professional experience into her work, having operated in numerous project management and communications contexts across the cultural and creative industries, regeneration, placemaking, the environment, skills and learning over many years.
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