In today’s episode of @the_grateful_web Art Podcast I'm joined by curator Will Marshall. 

Based in Manchester, Will has played an active role in the region's artist-led scene, previously working as a curator at Bankley Gallery and co-running the nomadic Scaffold Gallery, producing exhibitions in spaces across the North West. He is now the founder and director of Texture, an independent gallery established in 2025, presenting a thoughtfully curated programme of artists from both the North West and further afield.

In this conversation, we explore the importance of artist-led initiatives, local support networks, and the communities that sustain creative practice. We discuss the value of creating your own opportunities, the realities of building a gallery from the ground up, and why DIY approaches remain vital in providing spaces where artists can meet, exhibit, experiment, and contribute to a thriving cultural landscape.

Texture gallery re opens in a brand new space on the 19th June 2026 with the show Redactions.

Redactions

Thomas Griffiths, Jonah Hoffman, Joe O'Rourke, Emily Scarrott

Opens Friday 19 June 7-9 

Continues 20 June - 27 July by appointment

48 Stocks Street, Cheetham Hill, M88QJ

https://www.patreon.com/cw/JoClementsTheGratefulWeb/membership

Hello and thank you for tuning in – just a short message before we hear from this weeks fabulous guest. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please consider supporting it. Any support you can give to what is becoming a valuable resource and evolving archive of what’s happening in the North West of England’s arts community would be really appreciated. I am completely committed to supporting and shouting about our art community and the brilliant artists and curators who make it all happen and this is your chance to support them too .

You can sign up to my Patreon for just £2 a month, make a one-off donation, or get in touch if you’d like to support in another way. 

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Today on @the_grateful_web Art Podcast I’m joined by Nicola Ellis, an artist whose practice is deeply rooted in industry, collaboration, and materiality. Much of Nicola’s work has developed through her long-standing relationship with the Blackburn-based engineering company Ritherdon & Co, where she has worked alongside fabricators and factory workers to explore how knowledge, skill, and labour are embedded within materials and industrial processes.

Alongside discussing the exhibition, we also talk openly about the importance of artist support, the Festival of Making, networks, collaboration, and creating sustainable ways for artists to continue working and developing outside increasingly fragile arts structures. 

I had the privilidge of speaking to Nicola at her current exhibition Exercises in Knowing at HOME, Manchester a major new presentation that brings together sculpture, sound, and installation. Her film documenting the factories workers creates a fitting backdrop to our conversation echoing her process and the environment and the workers who inspired this fabulous exhibition.      

@_nicola_ellis_

@homemcr

https://www.nicolaellis.com/

https://www.homemcr.org/theme/spring-2026-exhibitions-md7x

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Hello and welcome to The Grateful Web with me Dr Jo Clements.  

This week I’m delighted to be taking to Katy Morrison, Katy is a Manchester-based independent curator/researcher and is the Director of PINK, a curatorial project and artist studio space in Stockport. She is pursuing a practice-based PhD at Manchester School of Art, exploring artist residencies as performative spaces for curatorial enquiry. Do join me for this fascinating discussion where we talk about the pitfalls and benefits of our working class roots, how her background in hospitality has given her the tools and business mindset to create spaces where art can thrive. Discover her innovative curatorial approach, the importance of resource-led practices, and her vision for sustainable, community-focused art spaces.

https://www.pink-mcr.com/about

@pinkmcr_

If you’re enjoying this podcast, please consider supporting it. I am currently unfunded any support you can give to help keep this labour of love going would be really appreciated. You can sign up to my Patreon for just £2 a month, make a one-off donation, or get in touch if you’d like to support in another way. 

I genuinely believe this is becoming a valuable resource—an evolving archive documenting what’s happening across the art world in the North West of England and want to continue shouting about our art community and meeting more brilliant artists.https://www.patreon.com/14900165/join

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Welcome to The Grateful Web with Dr Jo Clements. This week I’m joined by artists Alan Ward @alanjward_axisdesign and Jeffrey Knopf @jeffrey_knopf to talk about their collaborative exhibition *Nothing Remained Unchanged but the Clouds*.

Do tune in to this fascinating conversation about a project that started out with one slide bought on ebay during lockdown that developed into an amazing collaborative project with participants from a whole French village.

Developed through eventual residencies in Grandpré in the French Ardennes, the project weaves together photography, text, 3D scanning, and community participation to create a kind of living archive — where fragments of memory (personal, historical, imagined) are held, reshaped, and seen anew.

Alan brings a deep sensitivity to narrative and sequencing, shaped by decades as a book designer, while Jeff’s use of mobile 3D scanning introduces a fascinating instability — where objects blur, shift, and take on new meanings.

🔗 Listen now: [link in bio]

🎧 Available on all major platforms

Links below for more details and images of the project and to buy a copy of the fabulous accompanying book – which I highly recommend:

https://www.alanjward.co.uk/news/

https://www.alanjward.co.uk/product/pre-launch-subscription-offer-nothing-remained-unchanged-but-the-clouds/  

https://www.jeffreyknopf.co.uk

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In this episode, I am joined by artists Dr Kimberley Foster and Jane Scobie to discuss their participation in the Compass Residency. 

The residency connects two artists based in Manchester—Margaret O’Brien and Emma Illingworth—with Kimberley and Jane who are based in Norfolk. The project is organised by Proforma and Cromer Art Space in Norfolk  and is structured around a dialogue between urban and coastal environments.

The Manchester phase of the residency takes place at Rogue artists Studios, located within a former school building. This setting provides a layered context in which histories of learning, labour, and place intersect, offering a rich framework for artistic development and it is here that I first met with Kimberley and Jane

Kimberley’s work engages closely with the building’s educational past, reflecting on questions of pedagogy and the legacy of learning environments. By drawing connections between historical and contemporary approaches to knowledge, her practice considers how these structures continue to inform artistic thinking.

In contrast, Jane’s work responds to the surrounding landscape, focusing on the traces of the area’s industrial history. Through careful observation and documentation, she examines the material and cultural remnants that persist within the urban environment.

Together, their perspectives offer two complementary approaches to site-responsive practice, shaped by the context of the residency and the specificities of place.

@kimberleyfostersorhed @emmaillingworth_ @obrienmgt @janescobieartist https://cromer-artspace.uk/event/compass/

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On this weeks episode I’m joined by members Rebecca, Blake and Aliya from 1838 Collective - an artist-led organisation based at Islington Mill in Salford. Founded by 7 postgraduate students who met at Manchester School of Art, the collective takes its name from 1838, the year the school was established. Their work focuses on supporting emerging and graduate artists as they navigate the often-uncertain shift from art education into professional practice. Through exhibitions, workshops and a strong culture of peer support, they’re building a community that helps artists in Manchester develop their work, their networks and their confidence.   

@1838_collective

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Today I’m delighted to be talking to artists Sophy King and John-Paul Brown about their major new exhibition The Guardians of Living Matter at The Lowry in Salford, currently on show until 29th March 2026.

Sophy King is a multidisciplinary environmental artist whose work interrogates the nature–culture continuum through installation, film, and sound to examine ecological systems under the pressure of climate crisis. Her research across the moors and lowlands surrounding Manchester focuses on moss, fungi, peat, wildfire, and water—both as material and subject—probing our entanglement with damaged landscapes while proposing urban rewilding and sustainable futures. 

John-Paul Browns practice spans large-scale installation, documentary photography, expanded drawing, and painting. His work layers personal narrative with geopolitical and environmental realities, combining material sensitivity with environmentally conscious production methods. Like King, his commitment to low-carbon practice is not an add-on but a structural principle—shaping both aesthetics and ethics.

Together they present this fabulous, ambitious multimedia exhibition unfolding across four galleries.

At the centre of the exhibition is a vast, multi-sensory, immersive installation that explores a hope inducing speculative future: a living sculpture where mycelium and AI co-exist, a fictional research lab containing factual research, new ambitious large scale bodies of work and a delicious mixture of entangled logics and imagined possibilities for fungal and artificial systems. 

Instagram: @sophykingart 

Website: www.sophyking.com

Instagram: @johnpaulbrown_ 

Website: www.johnpaulbrown.com

https://thelowry.com/the-guardians-of-living-matter-myvx

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In this episode of The Grateful Web, Dr. Jo Clements interviews filmmaker Jeremiah Quinn, who shares insights into his diverse body of work, including documentaries that focus on social justice and forgotten narratives. They discuss the importance of sound design in filmmaking, the impact of his films like 'Oluwale' and 'Incognito', and the emotional connections that storytelling can create. Quinn also highlights his experiences working with charities and his upcoming projects, including a film about artist Heather Alderson. Quinn is a multi-skilled, multiple award-winning filmmaker, videographer and screenwriter.  He is close to completing his first feature documentary about an undisclosed subject which he has filmed in nine countries on three continents over the last three years.

His work spans documentary and narrative, short and long-form,  much of it rooted in social justice. His films have helped raise significant funds for organisations,  transformed institutions, and in some cases, changed the course of people’s careers. They also pack a serious emotional punch.

Links to Quinns work and the artists mentioned in this episode @jeremiahq_quinn1 https://www.youtube.com/@jeremiahq/videos HeatherAlderson @heathera077 and David Gledhill @davidgledhillartist

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On this brand new episode I speak to the brilliant multi-disciplinary artist John Powell Jones

John Powell-Jones is a UK-based artist whose work spans sculpture, animation, print and installation. Drawing on horror, folklore and the visual language of videogames, he creates speculative worlds populated by mutated beings and unstable technologies. His practice examines how power, ideology and myth shape perceptions of the body, the other and the future. Often working with ceramics and hand-built props, Powell-Jones combines meticulous craft with DIY worlding to produce narratives that are darkly humorous, unsettling and critically charged. He has exhibited widely across the UK and Europe, presenting projects that merge countercultural aesthetics with experimental storytelling.

https://www.johnpowell-jones.co.uk

https://johnpowelljones.bigcartel.com

@johnpowell_jones

If you enjoyed this episode please follow, share, spread the word and look out for more brilliant conversations coming soon. You can find the grateful web on ACAST, spotify, apple podcasts, Patreon or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you so much to those regular listeners who have been supporting me in this endeavour. If you want to support me further, please do check out my Patreon page, for just £2 a month you can help me to keep this podcast going – link in bio/show notes 

This podcast has been made possible with generous support from GMCA Inspire Fund and by an a-n Artists Bursary.

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In this episode I’m delighted to talk to Amanda Sutton Director of Venture Arts

Based in Manchester, Venture Arts is a supported studio that provides professional facilities, long-term artistic development, and artistic support that enables neurodivergent learning disabled artists to develop their own visual languages, produce ambitious work, and build sustainable careers within the contemporary art world.

Under Amanda’s leadership, Venture Arts has become nationally and internationally recognised for its exhibitions, commissions, collaborations with major cultural institutions, and its commitment to challenging who the art world is for, and whose work is valued. 

In this conversation, we talk about how Venture Arts works day-to-day as a supported studio, the conditions artists need to thrive, and what happens when access, care, and excellence are placed at the centre of an organisation’s practice. We also discuss what learning disabled artist Nnena Kalus’s recent Turner Prize win means for artists, organisations, and the future of inclusive contemporary art.

https://venturearts.org

@venturearts_ 

If you enjoyed this episode please follow, share, spread the word and look out for more brilliant conversations coming soon. You can find the grateful web on ACAST, spotify, apple podcasts, Patreon or wherever you get your podcasts.

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