Working Title: ‘Soft Systems: Embodied Intelligence and Classed Knowledge’
‘Soft Systems’ builds on the conceptual foundation of my 2 recent solo exhibitions to further explore how working-class, gendered and embodied forms of knowledge are carried, stored, and expressed through the body, memory, and materials and how these embodied forms of expression have the potential to connect or to suggest connections across communities.
I aim to create a new body of sculptural and audio work that investigates how classed and affective intelligence – so often dismissed as anecdotal or instinctual – is, in fact, structurally and culturally significant. Through drawing, textile sculptures, immersive sound, and collaborative practice, I will explore how tacit knowledge, particularly that passed through generations of women, carers, and makers, forms a kind of alternative epistemology.
‘Soft Systems’ will take the form of a networked installation of soft sculptural forms, recorded voices, and participatory elements. It will evolve over the two-year period through a process of deep research and experimentation, responding to new collaborations, materials, and contexts.
The bursary would fund a vital step-change in my practice. I would use the funding to support:
Training in immersive audio and spatial sound techniques to expand the sonic dimension of my sculptural installations.
Research trips to historical sites of labour, care, and classed education (including archives and former workhouses) in Darlington and surrounding areas to deepen my engagement with regional and national narratives.
Materials and fabrication costs for new sculptural work using textiles, salvaged materials, and embedded audio components.
Collaboration fees to work with artists and community members across the area, collecting oral histories and co-creating participatory elements of the work.
This award would give me the time and structure to consolidate interdisciplinary strands within my practice – combining drawing, sound, sculpture, memory, and social history – while allowing me to push the boundaries of scale, medium and public engagement furthering my investigation into classed and embodied intelligence allowing it to reach wider and more diverse audiences.
Darlington, with its deep history of labour, making, and social reform, offers a powerful context for ‘Soft Systems’. The project would provide a lens through which to consider the overlooked wisdom embedded in working bodies and lives – resonating with the town’s industrial and social heritage.
By collaborating with local communities to share stories, gestures, and practices rooted in care, resilience and community knowledge, the project would offer both artistic innovation and social connection. Workshops, interviews, sewing and drawing sessions would take place with Darlington’s cultural and community groups – positioning the town not just as a site of exhibition, but as a co-creator of meaning.
The final presentation in Darlington would draw audiences into a multi-sensory space that honours and interrogates how knowledge is formed beyond formal institutions. In doing so, the work will contribute to a wider conversation about who art is for, what it can do, and how it can be rooted in place while addressing broader cultural and social themes – helping raise the profile of Darlington as a site for bold, inclusive, and thoughtful contemporary practice. Detailed and thorough research will have potential for presentation at academic and artistic events and conferences.
I am a visual artist based in Manchester with a long-standing interest in the intersections of materiality, cognitive science, and social identity. My work explores how knowledge- especially knowledge that is embodied, gendered, or classed – is transmitted, stored, and valued. Through sculpture, drawing, sound, and digital media, I investigate how meaning is constructed through both physical and cultural systems, from neural networks to educational materials.
In 2023, I presented a major solo exhibition, ‘Everyone in This Room is Connected to Everyone in This Room’, at The Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery. The show included sculpture, drawing, and participatory elements exploring collective intelligence, neural mapping, and the emotional resonance of group experience. The project was accompanied by a ‘Festival of the Brain,’ where I invited cognitive scientists, educators, and fellow artists, to present their diverse perspectives on learning and ideas around our perceptions of the brain.
In 2025, my solo exhibition ‘Objects of Partial Truth’ at Saan1 Gallery, Manchester pushed this inquiry further, incorporating 3D printed vertebrae, velvet sculptures, and hybrid botanical-brain drawings to reflect on procedural memory and gesture. Works such as ‘The Images On Which We Draw’ reconfigured outdated educational images with layered, tactile interventions—challenging notions of objectivity and exposing cultural bias within systems of knowledge.
I have over two decades of exhibition experience nationally and internationally and hold a Fine Art practice-based PhD. I was the overall winner of the Greater Manchester Arts Prize in 2018, and have held leadership roles in higher education and in artist support networks, including a-n’s RD1st Coaching Programme and as Education Director of Artists and Education CIC.
My research has expanded to include AI and machine learning, having been awarded an AI fellowship with BeFantastic Bangalore in 2020. These digital tools, alongside my interest in sensory and embodied experience, now inform an increasingly interdisciplinary practice that draws together sculpture, multimedia, film and cognitive science.
Having recently left HE teaching to focus exclusively on my artistic and coaching practices, I am at a crucial moment – ready to integrate years of making and research into ambitious, immersive installations
• 2010 – 2014 University of Salford Ph.D. Completed November 2014.
• 2005 – 2007 University of Salford, MA Contemporary Fine Art: Distinction.
• 1999-2000 Manchester Metropolitan University PGCE Secondary Education in Art and Design.
• 1995-1998 University of Salford BA Hons Visual Arts and Culture: 2:1.
• 1992-1994 City College Manchester Foundation studies in Art and Design.
• 2025 Jan. Awarded a-n Bursary £1400
• 2024 Dec. GMCA Inspire Fund awarded £1100 development funding
• 2022 Arts Council England Awarded £29,500 NLPF
• 2018 Overall Winner GM Arts prize
• 2016 Arts Council England Awarded £15,000 Project Funding
I am the host of The Grateful Web podcast, a platform that celebrates the work of artists and thinkers exploring creativity, connection, and the brain. The podcast weaves together conversations with artists, neuroscientists, and cultural practitioners, reflecting my commitment to interdisciplinary dialogue and the social value of art.
Alongside this, I work as an artist’s coach and mentor, supporting individuals and organisations across the UK and Ireland. I have delivered tailored mentoring programmes for numerous galleries, artist-led spaces, and funding bodies, including structured support for early-career artists, mid-career transitions, and those seeking to expand or reframe their practices. My approach combines practical development with critical reflection, drawing on over two decades of experience as a practising artist, academic, and creative facilitator.
2023 Feb – May Everyone In This Room Is Connected To Everyone In This Room- solo exhibition commissioned by The Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery, Rawtenstall.
2022 May – film commission shown as part of the Preview event for British Art Show 09, Alan Hotel, Manchester
2019 Axisweb Micro Commission, Wakefield, Yorkshire.
2016 March – film work commissioned for Aperture, Quays Culture, Salford Quays, Manchester
2015 Nov – 2016 Feb Jo Clements : Retrospective, solo exhibition commissioned by Bury Art Museum, Bury, Lancs.
2012 May Resuscitation, solo exhibition at Camille Claudel hall, Clermont-Ferrand, France. Commissioned by Salford city council in collaboration with municipality of Clermont-Ferrand.
2004 March-May Misdirection, solo show commissioned by Mid-Pennine Art Gallery, Burnley, Lancs.
Work titled ‘What Has Been Comes Not again’ (2022), has recently been selected by the Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery as their stand key work at the Manchester Contemporary in November 2025 and has also been nominated for the TMC art fund prize.
Yes work for all of my solo shows have been featured in various publications and online platforms. Most recently my work has been featured in Visit Manchester, Time out, Manchester Confidential, Visit Manchester, Castlefield Gallery’s website, Rogue artists studios newsletter, Islington Mill’s newsletter as well as numerous local newspapers. Art critic Greg Thorpe has written about my work and art critic Bob Dickinson (Art Monthly)is currently writing a piece about my recent exhibition.
2020 Fellowship CoLab, BeFantastic, Bangalore. Funded by Jaaga, The British Council and Goethe-Institute.
2018 Castlefield Gallery Residency New Art Spaces, Manchester
2018 Jan – Feb Residency Cove Park, Scotland.
2017 May Collusion, Cambridge, Residency VR, AR Lab,
2017 June-July Selected for a-n RD1st residential Coaching Programme
Email: jo@joclements.co.uk
Address: Rogue Artists Studios, 2-6 Barrass St, Manchester, Greater Manchester, M11 1PU, GB
Local Authority: Manchester
