This exciting opportunity would give me time and space to significantly expand and deepen my artistic practice with the use of sound and moving image elements to develop my existing photography, projection and sculptural-based site responsive installation works.
Through extensive experimentation with new techniques and methodologies, as well as inspirational research and learning, I’m hoping to achieve my ambitions of making high quality, innovative installation work with increased scale and immersive, experiential qualities to connect with new audiences and communities and thereby also growing my future career opportunity potential.
I would use the funding for:
• specific professional training, development and mentoring opportunities in sound and moving-image techniques to be used in developing the new work (training, workshop and related travel costs)
• researching and learning from other artists who use these elements in site-responsive and large-scale works to feed into my development of the new work (training and travel costs to other art practices and pertinent exhibitions)
• inspirational research visit to Manifesta, one of Europe’s leading contemporary art festivals, which in 2026 will be focused on reimagining and repurposing empty spaces as inclusive cultural and social spaces in the Ruhr, including in Darlington’s twin town of Mulheim an der Ruhr, in order to develop and reflect on my existing understanding of what it means to make works in spaces in flux and transition with and for people in these places (travel costs)
• deepening and consolidating my current research and ideas around bridges, particularly as connected to Darlington, the theme for the final installation (travel costs to Darlington)
• making elements of the new work whilst on the above research and learning visits – details below (materials for the final exhibition)
• new sound and moving image materials and equipment (materials for the final exhibition)
• investigating the potential of using and repurposing innovative Darlington-made materials in the final work for example materials that could be used as screens, to add to sound, to create sculptural bridges etc (materials for the final exhibition)
• potentially using an appropriate empty space or spaces to premier the work (final exhibition costs)
• workshops (travel to Darlington and materials costs)
I would bring all of my exploratory training, learning and experimentation together to create a major experiential new installation work based in and of Darlington.
My final installation will use the themes of bridges (one of my current research areas), physically so central to Darlington with its railway history, new 50 tonne footbridge, river crossings, manufacturing pedigree and Darlington-made bridges around the world, as well as thematically in terms of connecting people, ideas and places.
My experimental and iterative making processes would include me recording experimental sound, video and photographs whilst in Darlington, then using this footage overlaid in Darlington’s twin town on my Manifesta research trip (as well as other places I visit for training and research as above), then working with that multi-layered footage to make ‘bridges’ or creative connections between Darlington and other places and people.
I would run creative workshops with Darlington communities, using the light and colour aspects which run through all my works to inspire and engage and directly feeding the work and ideas from these sessions into the making of the final exhibition.
I would be keen to share my experiences and create further links using my active social media presence to further enhance and raise the profile of the creative arts in the area.
I make installations, sculpture and photographic works that create altered visual and sensory effects and environments.
Using light through photography, projection and various other light sources and often employing industrial and mass-produced materials that are either already highly coloured or that are colourless which I then enrich with colour, I use processes and materials that highlight, distort and disorientate, for example through reflection, blurring, layering and duplication. My work is underpinned and motivated by my interests in how architecture, the built environment and physical space are experienced. I often explore sites in flux, transition or hiatus, working intuitively with the physical space as a material in itself as well as a container to make an intervention full of content and references that takes me time to make through iterative processes and then for a viewer to experience and process. Those site-specific and place-based observations included in my work, sometimes explicit, other times more hidden within the layers of the work, as well as relating to the physical fabric of the space and its surrounding area, might also key in the social, economic, political, environmental and historical contexts and the interplay of these issues and my experience of the space. I have exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally over the last twelve years. Solo exhibitions include Echo, commissioned by Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival; New Work at & Model gallery in Leeds and Assembly at Bankley Gallery in Manchester which was awarded after winning the Bankley Gallery Open competition. Group exhibition highlights include being invited to exhibit with Paul Huxley RA by the Royal Society of Sculptors for The Line London; invited to undertake a commission for The Art House in Wakefield; selected for the inaugural Coventry Biennial of Contemporary Art and presented by Castlefield Gallery at The Manchester Contemporary. My most recent exhibitions include:
• Re:ject, Lens Lab Project, Leeds, 2024
• RE-VIEW, Hull Artist Research Initiative, 2024
• Locus Lancaster, Lancaster University, 2024
• Palindrome, Critical Fish, publication, 2023
• Snap, Thorpe Park, Leeds, 2022
• Wet Dovetail 2:4, virtual, 2022
• Soanyway issue 11, online, 2022 Full list at https://www.hollyrowanhesson.co.uk/about
I have an MA Contemporary Fine Art (Distinction) from University of Salford. This was a practice-based and critically engaged Masters undertaken part-time from 2010 to 2013.
I started my MA following completion of a certificate in art and design at a further education college and without a BA in an art-based subject showing my determination, skills and seriousness for my practice.
For my final Masters presentation I secured a huge unfinished industrial space, made an entirely new body of work responding to the space from scratch over the course of a week and undertook all the exhibition, preview and marketing arrangements single-handedly.
• A-n Artist Bursary, 2025
• AA2A Artist in Residence, York St John University, 2024-5
• UNBOUND Dynamic Artists for Public Spaces training and mentoring award, 2024
• Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society grant, 2024
• Leeds Creative Labs award, University of Leeds, 2024
• Developing Your Creative Practice Arts Council England award, 2021
• Freelands Foundation Emergency Award, 2020
• Board Member of Royal Society of Sculptors, 2019
• Member of Royal Society of Sculptors, 2019
• A-n Artist Bursary, 2019
• Oppenheim-John Downes Memorial Trust Award, 2018
• Arts Council England Grants for the Arts award, 2017
• PS Mirabel Open prize commendation, 2016
• A-n Professional Development Bursary, 2016
• Oppenheim-John Downes Memorial Trust Award, 2016
• Arts Council England Grants for the Arts award, 2015
• Castlefield Gallery/ Creative Industries Trafford individual mentoring award, 2015
• Tracing PAPER by PAPER Gallery award, 2015
• Bankley Gallery Open first prize winner, 2014
I have been very proactive creating my own opportunities, for example exhibitions, professional development opportunities and profile-raising activity, both alone and with other artists and artist-led projects since I started practising after completing my MA in 2013.
I also use social media positively as a tool to connect and share with the aim of creating further opportunities in the future.
Leeds Creative Labs, University of Leeds, 2024 (commissioned by University of Leeds Cultural Institute) – selected artist working with the School of Civil Engineering
Locus Lancaster, Lancaster University, 2024 (commissioned by Lancaster University School of Architecture) – commissioned to make a new site-responsive work for the Locus Lancaster campus, place and experience symposium
Conversation in Colour, arebyte gallery, 2018 (commissioned by Royal Society of Sculptors) – commissioned for a two-person exhibition with Peter Huxley RA, in collaboration with The Line London
Micro-commission, The Art House, Wakefield, 2018 (commissioned by The Art House, We Are Projects and Wakefield Arts Partnership) – this work, Bend or break, was shown at the city’s popular multi-venue Artwork Wakefield cultural mini festival style event
Echo, Pyramid Arts Centre, Warrington, 2017 (commissioned by Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival) – Echo was a solo exhibition which ran for over four months during which time I also did press activity, artist talks, a podcast, other interviews etc
Not as yet but I am aiming for this, continuing to constantly make connections with a view to future opportunities.
• Axis – New Art Highlights, 2024
• Palindrome – Critical Fish, 2023
• Wet Dovetail – 2:4, 2022
• Soanyway – issue 11, 2022
• Axisweb – Five2Watch: Installation, 2018
• Art in Liverpool – Featured Artist: Holly Rowan Hesson at Pyramid Arts Centre, 2017
• Corridor8 – Holly Rowan Hesson: Echo | Pyramid Arts Centre, 2017
• This is tomorrow – Coventry Biennial of Contemporary Art review, 2017
• A-n – Coventry Biennial 2017 review: a springboard for new responses, 2017
• Creative Tourist – Graft at PS Mirabel, 2017
• Axisweb – Five to Watch at The Manchester Contemporary, 2015
• Axisweb – Artist of the Month, Holly Rowan Hesson, 2015
• Corridor8 – Review: Holly Rowan Hesson – Residency, The Penthouse, Manchester, 2013
Not as yet but I am aiming for this, continuing to constantly make connections with a view to future opportunities.
• AA2A artist in residence, York St John University, 2024-5
• Leeds Creative Labs, University of Leeds Cultural Institute programme, 2024
• AA2A artist in residence, York St John University, 2018-9
Plus artist-led and independent gallery residencies:
• Hull Artist Research Initiative, RE:VIEW, 2024
• & Model residency, & Model, Leeds, 2016
• From the Rooftops, The Penthouse, Manchester, 2013
Email: holly@hollyrowanhesson.co.uk
