“Changing Patterns.” This open call requested work that engaged with the concepts and possibilities for change or adaptation of ourselves and others. Can we break free from performativity and the discourse that surrounds us.
Michel Foucault stated that "Power is everywhere", and that we are part of the discourse, influence it and are influenced by it.
If we are entrenched within knowledge systems that affect us from birth, through our schools, institutions, laws, communities and societal 'norms', then is it possible to break free and change our pattern? How much wiggle room do we have if we are intrinsic to the power structures we live within?
Artist: Michaela Hall
https://www.instagram.com/michaela_hall_artist/
Do it with Jest' (2024) Analog collage
'Do it with Jest' is an exploration of our changing and fluid identities and how we often present ourselves in differing ways or think differently in different situations while still remaining fully ourselves. It's the exploration of things not being black and white and straightforward but full of complexities and change. Full of camouflages that are bold and bright, clashing and juxtaposing yet add to a whole image.
Artist: Natasha Tresadern-jones
Audacitea
Description: This work forms part of an ongoing series exploring the outward manifestation of emotion through female figures, each embodying a distinct emotional state, in the series so far, there are Audacitea (boldness), Defiantitea (unapologetic resistance), and Dominicitea (embodied supremacy). The series engages with the theme of Changing Patterns by interrogating the ways women navigate and sometimes break societal scripts imposed upon them. Drawing on the notion that “power is everywhere,” these figures are not passive subjects of the discourse, but active disruptors. They embody the possibility of altering ingrained behaviours, challenging performative roles, and asserting agency within entrenched systems. The use of tea as a medium is deliberate. It is humble, domestic, and culturally loaded, previously the artist explored themes associated with pause, hospitality, and tradition, but here it becomes an instrument of transformation. The organic stains, resembling ancient maps, evoke personal and collective journeys towards self-definition. Each mark carries the weight of ritual and repetition, yet hints at deviation and change. In Audacitea, the figure’s stance channels courage in the face of expectation, and flame-like hair visualises the intensity of suppressed emotions bursting into visibility. Also captured is the quiet, enduring strength needed to keep pushing against constraint. The series pours a spectrum of resilience, showing that change is not always loud or instantaneous, but can be enacted through persistence, self-awareness, and the refusal to conform. Through material, form, and symbolism, this series suggests that while we are shaped by the systems we inhabit, we also have the power to redraw the lines.
Artist: Yuliia Tarnovska
Spin Cycle Chaos
Description: Spin Cycle Chaos reflects on the feeling of being trapped in cycles that are hard to escape. The figure in the painting is caught in a restless swirl, echoing the way daily life can sometimes feel like a loop, work, responsibility, and expectations that keep repeating no matter how much we want to break free. The image takes inspiration from something very ordinary, a washing machine cycle. What is normally a background routine becomes a metaphor for the bigger patterns we live within, social rules, family roles, or personal habits that keep turning over and over. There is a sense of motion and turbulence, but also a question of whether that chaos could lead to change. Using acrylic on canvas, I worked with layered brushstrokes and contrasts in tone to create both movement and tension. Some areas feel smooth and flowing, while others are broken and sharp, suggesting the push and pull between comfort in routine and the desire to disrupt it. Within the “Changing Patterns” theme, Spin Cycle Chaos asks whether we can ever truly step outside the structures we grow up in, or whether freedom comes from finding new meaning within them. It captures both the weight of repetition and the possibility of breaking through it.
With this painting I am exploring the possibility of transformation within systems of performativity and power. This theme resonates deeply with me—not just intellectually, but personally and urgently. I am currently incarcerated. From within this institution, I have had to confront, question, and challenge the very structures that shaped and confined me. Michel Foucault’s assertion that “Power is everywhere” rings powerfully true when your daily existence is defined by the overt mechanisms of control: surveillance, punishment, and erasure. And yet, even in this environment, I search for the cracks in the system—small moments of resistance, creation, and connection that allow for agency, however fragile. This is my wiggle room. My artwork reflects this struggle and this hope. Inspired by the notion of changing patterns—not as rebellion for its own sake, but as a mode of resilience—I use reclaimed materials and layered techniques to visualise transformation. It is an act of refusal: to be flattened, silenced, or reduced. It is also an act of belief: in humility, heart, and the persistent possibility of change. This current theme speaks directly to my lived experience and artistic inquiry, and I hope the work may contribute meaningfully to the discourse you're curating. I remain deeply committed to exploring the intersections of power, identity, and freedom through both visual and sonic practices—and to connecting with platforms like yours that are open to voices from the margins.
Artist: Dr Jenna Fox
For four years I have been searching ways to change my patterns, to push against self imposed artistic boundaries and tap into versions of me that could create alternative work.
I discovered that by using alter egos and relenquishing control to them by writing their narrative I could generate new work that was different to my typical practice.
This installation is by my alter ego @eva_ava_artist
It explores the imposed boundaries and discourse we follow by the performativity of how we dress our children.
Artist: Ruth Fuller
I didn't realise I wouldn't see you again
Description: These paintings are part of a series and so this description is relevant to them as a group (so is repeated for each work as it refers to each one). The titles provide context specific to individual paintings but also aims to open them out. I like to explore the unsaid and the unseen in the familiar and the domestic. My recent paintings are small (7” x 5”) oil paintings on cradled board. I have been referencing interior physical and psychological spaces and Englishness with wallpaper like patterned areas. The work hints at a kind of domestic or self repression, patterns of power which are passed from generation to generation, but which always have the potential to be broken because of the psychological tensions that lie underneath. Thoughts and feelings rather than visual representations emerge in the paint; they are emotional maps and describe internal white noise chatter. Underneath most of my current work there is at least one other figurative painting, which is present but invisible, hidden work that has been ‘wallpapered’ over in paint. The wallpaper like areas in my paintings often break up however, and sometimes seem torn or worn away, to show a different form of truth alongside the presentable façade of pattern. The surface of the painting seems like it could be peeled away or might slip off the board. I aimed to make pattern alive through colour and content, like fever dreams on walls, and the paintings include forms which are seemingly recognisable, but which are uncertain, a bubbling sense of subconscious trouble that also delves into the uncanny.
Artist: Anna Kapranchuk
https://ill6.cargo.site inst: @flogmus
How far the scorching sun, and how unyielding the grip of root
Description: How distant the scorching sun is, and how unyielding the grip of roots. The work addresses the moment when the striving for light reveals not enlightenment, but the awareness of its shadow and the limitations of one’s own aspiration. This image speaks of the duality of the desire to change direction, to break free from a predetermined pattern, only to discover the boundaries imposed by invisible structures — the roots remain firm. The light here is both a source of strength and a reminder that every path toward it is bound up with the power of the earthly, holding us from below. Materials: cardboard, charcoal.
Artist: Shapers of Society - Rachael Taylor
Freedom to Rest (installation in the form of a creative intervention)
Description: This was a creative installation/venue in the form of a restful intervention that I designed for Shangri-La at Glastonbury. It was designed around the concept of having freedom to rest in a society that is always asking for more. The space was an opportunity to rest, do nothing, engage within an immersive space that promoted rest, daydreaming and letting go of the need to perform through constantly doing, instead it was a place to feel free to just be. The pillows were painted with paint from the free shop and all artworks were created using what exists. We staged happenings; this is a picture of one of my team resting on the bed outside the venue that was also part of the installation.
Artist: Ekaterina Mendor
The Blindness of Sight
Description: "The Blindness of Sight" Black marker, black ink, colored gel pens on cardboard, 28.5×42 cm This work explores the paradox of creative vision through the lens of Alexander Pushkin's poem "The Prophet" and the Russian legend of the blinding of St. Basil's Cathedral architects. The central blindfolded figure with a forked tongue dripping blood embodies the tragic fate of creators punished for their art. Perched on the tongue are the mythical birds Sirin and Alkonost—symbols of divine knowledge and harbingers of fate in Slavic mythology. The piece directly addresses whether it's possible to change established patterns of power and discourse. The blinding of the creator represents an extreme form of control over artistic expression—the physical suppression of the ability to see and create. Yet paradoxically, the loss of physical sight can lead to the acquisition of inner vision, the ability to perceive the true nature of things beyond surface appearances. The red blindfold symbolizes not only physical blindness but also society's metaphorical blindness to authentic art. The legend tells that Ivan the Terrible ordered the architects of St. Basil's Cathedral to be blinded so they could never create anything more beautiful—a pattern of power destroying what it cannot possess or control. This historical narrative reflects Foucault's concept of how institutional power shapes and limits creative discourse. Can we, as creators, break this cycle of suppression? Or are we doomed to repeat the pattern where authority inevitably seeks to control and destroy what threatens its stability? The mythical birds Sirin and Alkonost, creatures existing between worlds, represent the possibility of transcendence—the ability to rise above earthly limitations and see the broader picture. The work suggests that true change may only come through embracing paradox: sometimes one must lose sight to truly see. The forked tongue, referencing Pushkin's lines about the removal of the "sinful tongue" and its replacement with "the sting of a wise serpent," implies that authentic prophetic voice requires sacrifice and transformation. Materials: black marker, black ink, colored gel pens on cardboard
Artist: Cheng Xie
No One Asked, I’m Still Frying
Description
This project begins with a quiet, often overlooked desire—“No one ever asks me how I like fried eggs.” Through the repeated documentation of eggs from my daily meals, it responds to the persistent, reductive questions I face in social settings about my Asian identity. These seemingly identical yet subtly different eggs reveal an emotional space somewhere between comfort and obsession, and invite a deeper attention to the individual experiences, quiet differences, and longing to be truly understood that each image quietly carries.
Artist: Fumika Tani
@fumikasuri
https://new.express.adobe.com/webpage/RJnegicqMhrOk
TSUGI: Everyday Dyes – Avocado & Coffee
Description: Patterns change when materials, techniques and daily habits shift. TSUGI—meaning “to join, to patch, to inherit”—reimagines kasuri (Japanese ikat) through those changing conditions. Historically, kasuri coloured the everyday clothing of ordinary people with indigo: abundant, inexpensive, and tied to regional identity. This work asks what our “ordinary” materials are today. Handwoven at kimono width in British wool, the piece is dyed with avocado stones and coffee grounds collected from daily life. By turning food waste into colour, the textile links ecological practice with a contemporary sense of place, translating kasuri into a UK context. Japanese, twill in Britain—the same weaving technology has evolved in distant traditions, making those parallels visible in the textile. By transforming overlooked waste into colour and re-weaving historical motifs, TSUGI proposes that tradition is sustained not by replication but by relevance. It maps changing patterns of material, technique and identity, offering a model for how endangered craft can adapt—grounded in local resources yet speaking across cultures.
Artist Obiaje Andrew Ejiga
Description: Lin is a mixed-media work combining oil paint and textiles, inspired by W.E.B. Du Bois’ theory of Double Consciousness. The piece explores themes of code-switching, assimilation, duality, and intersection. Much like Changing Patterns, it asks whether we can adapt ourselves and others, and whether it is possible to break free from performativity and the discourse that surrounds us. The work reflects on how individuals juggle society’s perception of them against their own self-perception, presenting a duality of identity expressed as both traditional and modern. It challenges the viewer to consider: which version of the self is authentic, which is constructed, and whether the ‘true’ self is one we have always known or one shaped—and perhaps predetermined—by society.
Artist: Nadia Kissel
Description: In “Stripped”, the canvas becomes more than a surface, it becomes a site of transformation. Through acts of removal rather than addition, the work unearths what was once buried beneath layers of time, memory, and cultural displacement. This is not just painting, it’s a quiet rebellion against the pressure to present identity in fixed, palatable terms. Having moved through Russian, African, and European contexts, I carry within me a geography that is anything but linear. These inherited landscapes often contradict, collide, and coexist. Rather than resolving them, my work sits within the tension. “Stripped” began as a personal inquiry into memory and belonging, but it soon became something more radical: a way to shed imposed narratives and break from the cycles of performativity that so often shape how we present ourselves, especially across borders. In revisiting old canvases, some are decades old, I found myself peeling back not just paint, but personas. What lies beneath are remnants of past selves, past places, fragments that refuse to disappear. This process mirrors how we adapt when we move, when we grow: not by layering over, but by understanding and even revealing what we once tried to hide. There is no fixed form in “Stripped”. Working across painting, collage, installation, print, and drawing, the project embraces instability and hybridity. It is through this very fluidity that the work resists being boxed into discourse. Migration, after all, is not just a movement across land but a reshaping of identity, a refusal to settle into singularity. What “Stripped” ultimately proposes is that adaptation is not assimilation. It is a deep listening to the self in flux, a permission to change without performance. In a world that rewards coherence and visibility, this work celebrates the fragile, the erased, and the in-between. It asks: What happens when we stop explaining ourselves, and start excavating instead?