Receiving this bursary would allow me to commit to a sustained period of research and creative immersion within the city and its surrounding areas—tracing the echoes of its past that continue to shape its present. The open nature of the award offers a rare opportunity to expand my practice into new territories of collaboration, performance, and documentation. Working over two years will enable a more fluid, exploratory process, moving away from outcome-driven production toward a slower, more responsive engagement.
While I have previously worked with place and community through commissions and short-term residencies, this bursary offers the chance to begin from a place of open inquiry. My ongoing interests in popular culture, hierarchies, and economies will remain central—acting as both anchor points and provocations as the work evolves. Past collaborations with musicians have deepened the conceptual framework of my work and extended its reach to broader audiences. I aim to build on this momentum, using the bursary to explore new modes of interdisciplinary practice that are socially and critically engaged.
The funding would be divided into two key phases. First, it would support a period of in-depth research, enabling me to initiate dialogues with local communities and organisations, as well as undertake travel across the wider region. The second phase would involve consolidating these findings into a working methodology that informs the creation of new artwork(s). This would culminate in the development and fabrication of visual outcomes for public exhibition.
The initial research phase will facilitate engagement with new audiences, enabling the sharing of knowledge and resources. This process of exchange has been an invaluable asset in sustaining my practice over the past 25 years. It is through these connections that the work is pushed into unexpected areas of discovery. The opportunity to develop a new body of work without predetermined outcomes—and with the economic support to do so—is a rare privilege. This is what excites me about the bursary: beginning with the framework of an idea, and the freedom to follow where it leads, without the pressure of external demands, I believe the practice can move into creatively rich territory.
My research will focus on Darlington as the birthplace of the first passenger railway—an engineering milestone that is rightly celebrated. However, less attention has been paid to the broader cultural impact of train travel: symbolizing freedom, possibility, and hope, as reflected in countless songs, books, films, and poems. I intend to explore the origins of these ideas—the initial cultural and environmental impact of the railway—and investigate whether those echoes still reverberate through the city today.
This exploration will involve engaging with a wide range of local people and communities to gather stories that connect the past with the present. Using the original railway as a conceptual framework, I aim to expand our understanding of that historical moment by examining its imprint on the collective cultural psyche and its ongoing resonance in contemporary life. I am particularly interested in how this legacy has shaped the landscape, people, and culture of Darlington.
Central to this project is a process of listening and collaboration. I am keen to involve multiple voices in the making of the work—bringing together creatives across disciplines from within the locality. By embedding myself in the community and working across the creative arts, I hope to foster a shared inquiry that reflects the complexity and richness of Darlington’s cultural identity.
My visual arts practice spans multiple disciplines, including drawing, object-making, film, sound, text, and curation. At its core is an ongoing investigation into identity as a constructed concept, explored through popular culture. I often use the figure of the fan as a motif—representing a form of new spirituality in a secular age. Working directly with the objects, sounds, and imagery of popular music and wider cultural ephemera, I reframe them through meticulous acts of handmade labour. This process intentionally shifts materials from low to high culture, interrogating the economies of cultural value and the structures of capitalism. A rigorous conceptual framework underpins the fabrication of the work, which seeks to disrupt conventional ideas of skill, illusion, and authorship. Recent exhibitions
Gnossiennes (2023) – A collaboration with Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art (NGCA) and Durham University. Working with musician John Snijders, the project used Erik Satie’s six Gnossiennes compositions to create a two-channel film. An elongated piano keyboard spans across two monitors while all six scores play simultaneously, merging into a single dissonant soundtrack. Open the Morning Window (2023) – An audio work commissioned for Light at the End of the Tunnel at Newcastle Cathedral. The 25-minute piece is a reworking of a song by Magical Power Mako, featuring 30 vocalists singing a four-line lyric in 20 different languages, layering voices into a communal soundwork. Cover Versions (2022) – A group exhibition curated for Abject Gallery, Sunderland, and Exeter Phoenix. Featuring ten artists, the exhibition explored ideas of the original and its copies, as well as echoes and mutations in art, film, and music. This was a self-initiated project in which I participated as both curator and exhibiting artist. Selected work
Bench (2009) – A recreation of a park bench found in Viretta Park, Seattle, near the former home of musician Kurt Cobain. In the absence of an official memorial, the original bench became an informal site of tribute, layered with fans’ heartfelt messages scratched into the wood. My remade versions faithfully reproduce the bench in its various states. In the gallery setting, the fan inscriptions become drawings—intimate gestures drained of their original emotional immediacy, raising questions about authenticity, reverence, and commodification.
Do you have a degree in visual or applied arts at undergraduate and/or post-graduate level? Please provide details. (200 words)
BA in Fine Art, Painting, at Bath Spa University (formally Bath College of Higher Education) between 1991-1994 gaining a 2:1.
Have you previously received professional grants or awards? Please give details. (200 words)
PLUS art prize, Museum Wiesbaden in Germany in 2007, with my work featured in the subsequent exhibition and catalogue. I have received Arts Council project grants in 2016 for the development of my practice and creation of body of work for solo exhibition with NGCA (Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art) and Tyneside Cinema. In 2020-22 for the development, collaboration and presentation of new work with NGCA, Durham University and Gala Durham.
Are you involved in organising self-created professional opportunities, for example, running an artist-led studio or project? (200 words)
I worked with Five Years Gallery and Studio organisation between 1996-1998 as a curator / artist in their artist studio and exhibition spaces. With St. Johns Church, Healey, Northumberland, I curated an exhibition and performance entitled To Be In This Number in 2022. Currently working Abject Gallery, Sunderland, 2023 – ongoing as a curator and advisor for artist studio and gallery with Breeze Creatives arts organisation. This has resulted in two group exhibitions, Cover Versions, which subsequently toured to Exeter Phoenix and Is This Thing On which was presented as part of Sunniside Nights, supported by Sunderland Council.
BA in Fine Art, Painting, at Bath Spa University (formally Bath College of Higher Education) between 1991-1994 gaining a 2:1.
PLUS art prize, Museum Wiesbaden in Germany in 2007, with my work featured in the subsequent exhibition and catalogue.
I have received Arts Council project grants in 2016 for the development of my practice and creation of body of work for solo exhibition with NGCA (Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art) and Tyneside Cinema. In 2020-22 for the development, collaboration and presentation of new work with NGCA, Durham University and Gala Durham.
I worked with Five Years Gallery and Studio organisation between 1996-1998 as a curator / artist in their artist studio and exhibition spaces.
With St. Johns Church, Healey, Northumberland, I curated an exhibition and performance entitled To Be In This Number in 2022.
Currently working Abject Gallery, Sunderland, 2023 – ongoing as a curator and advisor for artist studio and gallery with Breeze Creatives arts organisation. This has resulted in two group exhibitions, Cover Versions, which subsequently toured to Exeter Phoenix and Is This Thing On which was presented as part of Sunniside Nights, supported by Sunderland Council.
The Great North Run Cultural Programme, in 2006 to respond to the 13.1 mile run. The drawing was exhibited in the run up to the event, a limited edition print commissioned and sold and each finisher of the run was given a postcard of the drawing.
With Artlande and Go NorthEast in 2006 I was invited to make a drawing in response to the area. The drawing was printed onto the reverse of every passengers ticket on Go North East buses during the festival.
Becks Fusions with Forma and ICA, London, 2007 I was commissioned to make a
360 degree film projection, which was presented in a temporary projection space in Tranfalgar Square.
Film and Media Festival, Berwick upon Tweed in 2007 to respond to a historic building in the city. I made a sound artwork, The Room, for the ammuntion store, the Magazine, sited in the walls of the city.
An English Journey: Re-Imagined, 2010-11
AV Festival, Newcastle, Faster Than Sound, Aldeburgh, The Barbican, London – A multiple film commission for three iterations of the live performance event with the writers Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore and a revolving line up of musicians and poets.
Latitude Festival, 2011, sculptural work for grounds of the music and arts festival; Gate (Nick Drake).
Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2014, a wall drawing commission for newly opened restaurant space in the cinema entitled DIALOGUE.
Stockholm Arts & Music Festival Award, 2014, site specific seven channel AV artwork; Visual Drone (Unresolved), in collaboration with musician Jason Pierce.
Berwick Visual Arts, Maltings, Berwick upon Tweed, 2015, Wish You Were Here exhibition, postcard commission print in response to exhibition.
Hugo Boss, 2017, artwork commission in response to Michael Jackson On The Wall exhibition, National Portrait Gallery, London – drawings for limited edition t-shirt.
Newcastle Cathedral, 2023, Into The Light award for a new sound work; Open the morning window…, in response to the Quire cathedral space.
mima, Middlesbrough, UK
NGCA, Sunderland UK
Hugo Boss, Metzingen, Germany
The Roberts Institute of Art, London, UK
Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK
Durham University, Durham, UK
Ragnarock Musett, Roskilde, Denmark
Museum Wiesbaden, Germany
Narc, April 2022, interview
The New York Times, 20 July 2018, review
The Independent, 28 June 2018, review
The Sunday Times, 15 July 2018, review
The Guardian, 28 June 2018, review
Corridor 8, Annual 2012, wiritingcommission
Wire, January 2010, writing commission
a-n magazine, August 2005, cover and interview
Amelia’s magazine, S/S 2007, interview
Cool Hunting, April 2006, review
The Northern Echo, 12 April 2005, review
The Art Newspaper, December 2002, interview
Current representation Seventeen, London with works held in representation with Regina Gallery (Moscow, USSR), Lora Reynolds Gallery (Austin, USA), Vane (Gateshead, UK) Charlie Smith Gallery (London, UK). Previous gallery representation with David Risley Gallery, Copenhagen, DK.
Buying Time Residency, 2013 – placement with Stockton on Tees music festival to create two channel film work, Come Together.
AA2A, Sunderland University and FabLab, 2016 – fabrication of artworks for National Glass Centre, View Source exhibition.
Email: mail@grahamdolphin.co.uk
Address: 1 Salisbury Close, Shotley Bridge, Consett, Durham, DH8 0NR, GB
2 responses
Thorough proposal, links to accessible theme and previous work has demonstrated how originally artist tackles this type of investigation (e.g. music, pop culture etc). Interested in proposed focus ‘broader cultural impact of train travel: symbolizing freedom, possibility, and hope, as reflected in countless songs, books, films, and poems.’ Based in County Durham, may be a timely opportunity for artist, and expect would attract public engagement.
DAP award would allow artist to commit to a sustained period of research and creative immersion within borough and its surrounding areas, offering a rare opportunity to expand practice into new territories of collaboration, performance, and documentation. Proposed two phase approach First – research, enabling dialogues with local communities and organisations, as well as undertake travel across the wider region. Second phase would involve consolidating these findings into a working methodology that informs the creation of new artwork(s). This would culminate in the development and fabrication of visual outcomes for public exhibition. Focus on birthplace of modern railways.
With Hopetown Darlington and other cultural venues, and other rail infrastructure, there may be a range of locations to share any outcomes. Within interview I’d be keen to hear artists thoughts on:
* How they may engage with communities of different ages/different levels of interest in railways and what types of engagement they may lead?
* Given scale of impact of the birth of the passenger railway is massive, how extensively they may explore this impact (on business, society, culture, environment etc) and how might they curate a task of this scale?
* There is a lot of focus on railways in North East during bicentenary year, including an extensive S&DR200 festival – how might artist solicit engagement/bring new perspective in this context?
* How might an opportunity of this type be of particular benefit to this artist at this time?