'Artist Bed'
- meet the artists

‘ARTIST BED’ Performances

 

BOB DIXON 'Walkabouts'

In this performance Bob Dixon will make ‘A sequence of drawings’ from the bed which respond to the people in the room and the room itself. Dixon requests that, when possible, visitors in the vicinity of the bed stand still for a few moments to make informal tableau that provide a focus for the drawings.

​

BIO

Born in Derby, Bob Dixon studied Painting at Brighton University and the Royal Academy of Art, London. Dixon subsequently worked with digital animation and video; making Music Videos, Pop Concert visuals an Corporates. Animation and Video were also the focus of Dixon’s Art practice at this time.

 

​

ASHER PENNY ‘Sleep Demon’

His performance art borrows from all facets of his creative life. Spoken word, live painting, sound, and body all converge in acts that are visceral and deeply present. Like his poetry and painting, performance becomes a site for rebellion—both personal and political.

A multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans photography, contemporary painting, music, performance, improvisation and poetry. His work is driven by an urgent curiosity and the power of language. Rooted in spontaneity and informed by subculture, his art resists easy categorisation—each medium feeding into the next to form a layered, evolving expression.

Across all disciplines, his work invites viewers to lean in, to listen closely, and to stay awake. It’s a practice in motion, one that speaks from the edges and toward something just beyond language.

 

 

MI ELFVERSON 'Covered Emotions'

'Internum” — Latin for ‘that which is within’ — invites participants and viewers to confront what is often concealed: the emotional interior lives of women, shaped by centuries of suppression, social expectation, and unseen labour.

This installation explores the tension between visibility and invisibility. What do we cover to survive? What parts of ourselves have never been uncovered? Beneath soft red fabric, each body becomes a silent force — expressing not just emotion, but history, resistance, and transformation.

“Internum” – Covered Emotions” is not just an artwork; it is a participatory protest. It is a conversation between self and society, emotion and expression, exposure and protection. It asks us: What have you covered to stay safe? And what might happen if you uncover it now?

​

BIO

Mi Elfverson is a Swedish photographer, filmmaker, and visibility activist.

Founder of EyeStorm Women, she works at the intersection of art, gender equality, and storytelling, creating spaces for women to be seen, heard, and empowered.

With a background in film and media across global platforms, Mi now uses the still image as a form of activism, presence, and personal truth.

​

​

ANDY ASH 'no release'

Andy's performance, installation and sound piece that invites the audience member to be in the bed while he is kneeing at the foot of the bed and whispers to them. He will be connected to the participants via broadcasting device so he can speak and sing directly to the participant creating a personal and intimate moment/relationship between artist and audience. Whispering is a powerful device that focuses attention, communicates secretly and intimately. Beds can be lonely and sad spaces. They are private and rarely public. This performance will highlight those moments when one can’t sleep, when one is alone, late at night, restless, and reflecting on being outside and yet transfixed in the personal inner world and the sub-consciousness.

​

BIO

Andy is an artist, a researcher and an educator. His practice is primarily sculpture, but an expansive notion of a sculpture, and therefore includes performance, film, photography, sound, objects, drawing, print, and text in an installation or in situ context. Andy lives in Brighton and his studio is at Red Herring artist cooperative in Portslade. Andy is an Associate Professor and teaches post-graduates at UCL. Andy has exhibited local, nationally and internationally including Canada, Japan, Finland and Spain. Andy recently performed at the Winter Sculpture Park. He has collaborated with cultural institutions such as Tate Exchange, Tate Britain, ICA, Kings College Art Centre Cambridge University, Casa da Imagem, CVAN, NSEAD, InSEA, BAN and the Freelands Foundation.

Andy is interested in what happens at the intersection of conceptual art and spaces. Often he uses walking as an artistic practice and uses this moment, these opportunities, as a space to play - to inquire, to research, to make. 

​

 

KAREN TILLEY ‘Pieces of a Woman’

​The story of a working class woman.

Karen is a Brighton born visual and multidisciplinary artist.

Influenced from observations of everyday life, her interest comes from female relationships: how people interact, their roles and family dynamics. This extends further into socially and behaviourally defined spaces; the traces and evidence of human interaction in society. Utilising performance, audio, moving image, photography, sculpture and emerging technology, her curiosity means she is continually developing new skills.

Karen’s new work was generated from Arts Council England's funding to develop her practice, researching into how working class women are represented in art through performance and sound. 

During a performance session with her mentor Tania Holland Williams, she was questioned why she was using stories of other women. She asked Karen what was driving her, and what was her story.

Using  performance and poetry, she wrote her story, a story that is raw and empowering. 

Pieces of a Woman is the story of her lived experience as a dyslexic working class woman in a male dominated family

 

 

LUCY NEWMAN ‘Bed’

The artist sits perched on the edge of the bed, watching TV. She is crocheting a small object using string. On the TV, a series of drawings of a bed play on a loop, one by one. They feature a collaged figure. A distorted voice over transmits descriptions the images. From the clothes and silhouette, we make out the artist on screen. It’s as if the TV screen is tuning in to her thoughts and uncannily transmitting them back. The bed nurtures the ideas and the TV projects them into the space. The artist finishes the crochet. It’s a small bowl; She unravels it, to begin all over.

​

BIO

Lucy NEWMAN was born in Brighton and studied Fine Art Printmaking at Chelsea and the RCA. 

Recent exhibtions include the Royal Academy Summer show ’24, the Directors cut in Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair online and co-curating the annual exhibition MUD in Glynde, East Sussex. Collaborative short films were screened at the ICA and Whitechapel Gallery.

Over time, she has contributed to exhibitions and projects in the UK and abroad (London, Reykjavik, New Orleans) at the same time as working in design and moving image.

Lucy works with mono prints, video collages and stop motion animation to explore her interests. These include everyday artefacts, such as a paper bag, fan or a photo, and epic subjects that you may find distilled in the pictures in a coffee table book, such as History, Geology and the Natural World. All the time interested in the picture surface as well as subject, her work embraces analogue optical tricks, primary colours and material transformations, with the artist making appearances via a green screen backdrop. www.lucynewman.com

 

 

MARIA COHEN ‘Speechless Nights’

The main objective of this work is to accumulate words into a system characterised by multiple repetitive movements devoid of any precise direction. Instead of articulating thoughts into specific words with the intent of expression, or conveying particular meanings to the audience, I sought to explore the unrestricted potential of chaotic movements. These movements guide the image towards unpredictable circumstances, allowing the creative process to transcend human instincts of control and manipulation over the outcome. The structure of recurring strokes fosters a sense of relaxation and meditative introspection, enabling the process to organically dictate the further result.

​

BIO

Maria Cohen is a UK-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores sexuality, identity, and vulnerability through a diverse range of media: painting, drawing, animation, printmaking and performance. With an MA in Fine Art Painting from Camberwell College of Arts (2021), she was awarded the Art Ambassador Prize and has exhibited widely, including at the South London Gallery and the Saatchi Gallery’s London Grads Now 2021. 

 

 

MARIA GERGUIS ‘Soft Protest’

Maria performs under the bed rather than on it. This physical positioning reflects the lived reality of many marginalised artists—working, creating, existing in spaces that are structurally and symbolically hidden:

During my time under the bed, I will be engaged in the ordinary, often invisible acts of artmaking: stitching, assembling, writing, arranging materials. This quiet, durational performance becomes a kind of protest through presence. My body may not be fully visible, but my labour, intention, and care will be felt.

After the performance, the artworks created during that time will remain in the space — left behind as silent traces of the act, a residue of making-as-resistance. They will exist without spectacle, inviting the audience to witness what is usually overlooked: the process, the persistence, the unseen artist.

​

BIO

Maria is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the emotional and physical dimensions of home—not only as a personal refuge, but also as a site shaped by displacement, power, and memory. My practice investigates the deep interrelationship between people and place, revealing the ways in which landscapes, both bodily and environmental, carry the weight of trauma, resistance, and survival.

I work across sculpture, installation, painting, and performance, using tactile and process-based methods to reflect on fragility, endurance, and the unseen labour of existing within and outside dominant systems. The scars left by forced migration, class struggle, and systemic exclusion are not abstract themes in my work—they are lived realities.

As an immigrant, woman, working-class, and neurodivergent artist, I often experience the art world from its periphery. My practice embraces this position—not as absence, but as a generative space of observation, care, and quiet resistance.

 

AISLING ZAMBON ‘Say Your Peace’

The public is invited to observe, write, or speak to the artist in bed. Offering space to contemplate what it means to be human and to live beyond the self, the artist acts as a conveyor of the soul and a presence between realms. This piece aims to provoke self-reflection and awareness of our mortality and interconnectedness.

​

BIO

Aisling is a Performance Artist living in Brighton and Hove. She trained as a Theatre Director (BA Hons, Rose Bruford College of Performing Arts) and has a 27 year career in cross arts collaboration, devising, socially engaged and participatory practices. 

Most recently, she has been performing live:

We Are One at Vision exhibition (AOH), I Am You, You Are Me at the Adelaide Salon and The Artist is Guru, within the 24 hour performance art project by The Adelaide Salon

​

FOOD OF WAR  ‘Mouth to Mouth’

Mouth to Mouth is a live performance exploring the symbolic, intimate, and political dimensions of nourishment, vulnerability, and embodiment. Centring on a direct, one-to-one encounter between artist and audience, the work invites participants to reflect on care, desire, and the societal projections placed upon gendered bodies.

The performance reflects on how nourishment may be expressed beyond food, how femininity is often framed through lenses of care and desire, and how the open mouth serves as a metaphor for speech, hunger, and the blurred boundaries between feeding and being fed.

​

BIO

Food of War is a multidisciplinary art collective founded in 2010, bringing together artists, filmmakers, educators, and researchers from Latin America and Europe. The collective investigates the relationship between food, conflict, migration, and ecology, using food both as a medium and as a message. Their work engages the senses—inviting audiences to see, taste, smell, and reflect—while uncovering personal and political narratives often left unheard.

Through installation, performance, film, and community workshops, Food of War challenges dominant discourses and illuminates the resilience of communities affected by war, displacement, and environmental crisis. Each project is rooted in fieldwork and collaboration, often involving refugees, indigenous communities, and local residents. Their socially engaged practice seeks to create spaces for dialogue, healing, and transformation.

The collective's work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Saatchi Gallery and Southbank Centre in London, and the National Art Museum of Ukraine in Kyiv. Notable projects include Clouded Lands, a compelling response to the legacy of Chernobyl, and Peace at the Table, which explored reconciliation through food in post-conflict Colombia.

Food lies at the core of their practice—not merely as sustenance, but as a living archive of culture, memory, and resistance. 

 

 

RACHEL CLATWORTHY "Intimacy between sheets"

Performance explores the intimate and tender relationships and moments we have with family and friends in our own bed: conversations, memories, cups of tea, tears, music, truths. Inviting the public to join the artist in The Bed for herbal tea to discuss these intimate moments. 

During the conversation, Rachel will be sketching, with a sharpie on a roll of paper- capturing the guest sitting in bed and the moment being shared, capturing an array of intimate moments from between the sheets.  

​

BIO

Graduating in 2006, with a 1:1 in Illustration and Printmaking.  After which she co-built a print studio in Hollingbury 'Coachwerks' - facilitating community workshops alongside running a second hand 'screen printed' t-shirt stall at the iconic West Pier. 

In 2008, Rachel travelled performing Shakespeare’s Richard II - With the infamous Jonathan Kay and his Nomadic Academy of Fools.  

Presently, Rachel is a Director at Stanmer Organics since 2019, and is one of the founding Directors of the Petal Project- a non-profit CIC providing a Creative Community Space and venue in the tranquil surroundings of Stanmer Park.  

 

ISOBEL SMITH ‘Asking for Angela’

​

In Asking for Angela, Isobel presents a delicate yet charged exploration of gender, abuse, vulnerability, and control. Drawing inspiration from the "Asking for Angela" safe word—a phrase used by women to signal distress in public spaces—this piece examines how femininity is both constructed and constrained, and the subtle violence embedded in societal expectations of women.

The performance begins with Smith wearing an icing-bag muzzle, filled with pink icing, which mutes her voice, forcing her to "speak" only through the delicate, sugary flowers that emerge from the nozzle. A figure lies beneath the covers—though not a person, exactly. The flowers are carefully placed on the bedclothes, one by one. The act is meditative and precise, submitting to the pressure to appear sweetly compliant.

Drawing on feminist performance practices from Ana Mendieta to contemporary artists interrogating trauma and control, Asking for Angela uses sweetness as a kind of camouflage. Through psychoanalytic lenses—especially Winnicott’s “false self”—the work quietly reveals how submission and decoration can become survival strategies. The result is a piece that is both unsettling and intimate, screaming is not an option.

​

BIO

Isobel Smith is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans sculpture, performance, and installation. Her work explores themes of identity, the subconscious, and in-between states, often drawing from psychoanalytic theory, feminist discourse, and mythology. Based in East Sussex, she has exhibited and performed widely in the UK and internationally. Isobel is about to start her artist residency at Adelaide Salon, Brighton. website: isobelsmith.org

​