Associates Programme – Mentors

Benedict Drew lives and works in Whitstable and Margate, UK. He works across video, sculpture, music and their associated technologies. He creates large-scale installations, often concerned with ecstatic responses to socio-political anxiety.

Solo exhibitions include TRAPPED IN A STICKY SHED WITH SIDE CHAIN COMPRESSION, iMT Gallery, London; The Trickle-Down Syndrome, Whitechapel Gallery, London; KAPUT, QUAD Gallery, Derby; Walker Gallery, Liverpool; THE ANTI ECSTATIC MACHINES and Heads May Roll, Matt’s Gallery, London.

Drew has released several records, including Crawling Through Tory Slime (MANA Records) and The Ughhh Ballads (Bloxham Tapes) and regularly collaborates with other artists and musicians.

He is a lecturer in Fine Art at Slade School of Fine Art and is represented by Matt’s Gallery, London.

Image Credit: Benedict Drew, The Trickle-Down Syndrome, 2017. Installation View.

Sally O’Reilly writes for performance, page and video. Her live works are often made for a particular site (a train tabletop, a swimming pool, an industrial greenhouse, a peninsular), and everything is a complicated tangle of the theoretical, the technical, the comic, the fantastical, the psycho-social…

Recent projects include the novella Help in Cucumbers (JOAN, 2023) and the spoken word and music album Where They Gather (October Records, 2022). She’s also written several opera libretti, a few other books and contributed to countless art magazines, exhibition catalogues and literary journals.

Image: Ambiguity, talk held as part of Bad Vibes Club, Open School East, 2015

Simeon Barclay draws upon a rich vein of pop cultural sources, producing works that activate complex cultural histories, whilst exploring the ways in which we navigate identity, both imposed or self-curated. Combining a diverse range of media, Barclay creates reductive, sophisticated works that engage with aspects of aesthetics, British culture, subjectivity and memory.

Simeon received his BA from Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds in 2010 and an MFA from Goldsmiths College, London in 2014. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally including at Southbank Centre, Tate Britain, South London Gallery, London; Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool; Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Workplace Foundation, Gateshead; Holden Gallery, Manchester; The Tetley, Leeds; Cubitt Gallery, London; The Bluecoat, Liverpool; Jerwood Space, London; Galerie Lisa Kandlhofer, Vienna; Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels; Arcadia Missa, New York and W139, Amsterdam. Simeon lives and works in Leeds, UK.

Image: Simeon Barclay, In the Name of the Father, South London Gallery, September 2022. Installation view, Andy Stagg

Shenece Oretha (b. Montserrat) is a multidisciplinary artist currently listening from London. Her practice is invested in the mobilising potential of sound enacted through her sound sculptures, multi-channel installations, poetry, workshops and print.

Image: Shenece Oretha, Called To Respond, 2020. Cell Project Space