Artonomics, where artists discuss making art and making money.

Artists Sovay Berriman and Lucy Harrison talk about how they sustain their art-making by respectively working as a plumber and at an offset litho printers, alongside varied sources of public arts funding. They also discuss their diverse creative practices which include working with communities, publishing and exhibitions. Hosted by artist and curator Cathy Lomax.

A collaboration between SPACE and a-n. Recorded remotely in June 2022.

You can listen to the Out of SPACE | Artonomics podcast on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and your web browser. 

Listen to Artonomics episode 1 here >

The experiences, views, opinions and recommendations presented in the podcast are the speakers’ own. The content does not constitute professional, financial or legal advice from SPACE or a-n and any reliance on it is at the listener’s own risk.

LINKS AND RESOURCES

a-n
Arts Council England Access Support
Rendezvous Projects
Aldgate Press
Plumbmaid
Paying Artists
a-n Artist Bursaries 2022-23
Free legal and tax helpline for a-n members
a-n Guidance on fees and day rates for visual artists

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Host

Cathy Lomax is a London-based artist, the founder of Transition Gallery and the editor of Arty and Garageland magazines. She is currently researching the role of makeup and artifice in the creation of the Hollywood female star image for a PhD at Queen Mary University of London. Cathy’s paintings and installations assimilate the seductive imagery of film, fame and fashion, juxtaposing it with personal narratives and the everyday. Her particular interests are femininity, masquerade and the way that popular culture is constructed, consumed and related to. In 2014 Cathy was an Abbey Painting Fellow at The British School at Rome and in 2016 she won The Contemporary British Painting Prize. Her 2017 solo exhibition The Blind Spot is profiled by Matt Price in The Anomie Review of Contemporary British Painting. Recent exhibitions include Star Bar, Broadway Cinema, Letchworth Garden City (ongoing), The Immaculate Dream, Collyer Bristow Gallery, London (2019) and Dear Christine, Vane Gallery, Newcastle (and touring) (2019).

Guests

Sovay Berriman was born in Cornwall, where she currently lives and works as an artist and heating engineer. She graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2003 and trained as a plumber and heating engineer in 2015. Sovay is interested in the responsibilities and potential of an element or individual, and the possibilities of the collective, and works across a variety of materials and methods to build abstract and semi-fantastical structures. She has shown at galleries across the UK including Castlefield, Manchester; Royal Standard, Liverpool; Phoenix, Exeter; and Contemporary Art Society London. Her new multi-platform work, MESKLA | Brewyon Drudh (Mussel Gathering | Precious Fragments) is taking place in Redruth, Cornwall until 30 October 2022. It uses sculpture and conversation to explore contemporary Cornish cultural identity and its relationship with heritage, land and extraction industries, such as tourism.

Lucy Harrison is a London-based artist, she graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1999, and works on projects that engage with places, their histories and communities, culminating in events, installations, films and publications. Alongside her art practice Lucy works part time at Aldgate Press, an offset litho printers in Bow which was set up as part of Freedom Press in 1981. Her recent projects include Linear Park: Plot Lines, made in collaboration with Matter Architecture, which involved re-designing and replanting a park in Leytonstone using the boundary lines of houses that were demolished to make way for the M11 link road. She also works as part of Rendezvous Projects, a Community Interest Company set up with four other artists and writers with the aim of exploring the social history of places in creative and collaborative ways. Their current project is Sweet Harmony: Radio, Rave & Waltham Forest 1989 – 1994, which has an exhibition at Vestry House Museum in Walthamstow.