As a 90’s kid who loved arts and crafts, there’s nothing more nostalgic to me than Hama Beads. The intricacy of placing each bead on the board, one by one. The sound of one hitting the floor, never to be seen again. The fear of dropping the entire board when carrying it over to the iron and the smell when they all melt together to finish your masterpiece. I rediscovered Hama Beads a couple of months ago when I was clearing out my old bedroom at my parents house and I have loved every second of making this piece.
The subjects are all items that have shaped me to become who I am today and reflect a carefree childhood which we all long for during this time of Covid, Brexit, Cost of Living Crisis, etc. I say carefree, but I definitely cried when my Tamagotchi died, even if it was from old age, and I never did solve the Rubik’s cube.
The style and the colour palette is a mash up of my own childhood experiences and inspiration from Andy Warhol, an artist I was taught about at primary school and one whose work has always stood out to me. I love his use of block colours and seeing the same subjects in different lights. In terms of the colour palette I’ve used in this piece… growing up I always thought that because I was a girl my favourite colour had to be pink, but as I got older and became my own person I realised stereotypes don’t have to define me and I am allowed to like the colour blue!
So to me, this piece not only represents nostalgia, but also a person’s development through life, learning about yourself and not being afraid to express who you truly are, and finally the permanence of using plastic beads showing us that there will always be a part of us who is ready to play.

Blake Prol Barbosa is a Spanish multidisciplinary artist based in Manchester. Their work explores the complex nature of human experience, with the body as a central focus. While primarily working in oil painting and printmaking, Blake uses analogue photography and self-portraiture to experiment and express different aspects of their existence. Through their art, they confront personal challenges, using each piece as a space for reflection and discovery, providing a profoundly intimate look at mental health and the search for meaning.

Born in Salford, Brenda now lives in Worsley. Brenda began drawing at an early age and resumed her art training in the early 80s obtaining a BA (Hons) in Fine Art and Art History and a PGCE in Art and design. However her career took a different path. After retirement Brenda began painting and drawing again and has since exhibited in various galleries around the North West and Ross on Wye. In 2023 Brenda was chosen to appear on Channel 4 in Drawers Off. Brenda draws visual pleasure from nature. Sun, sea, beaches, countryside, cold landscapes; all are a constant source of inspiration. Brenda also helps to run Life drawing workshops in Monton and Eccles. During lockdown Brenda attended many zoom life drawing sessions and has a large portfolio of life drawings. Find Brenda on Instagram : brendafh1 Facebook https.//www.facebook/Brenda Hird Recently exhibited In “Capturing Creativity” Bromsgrove Currently exhibiting in Gallery 24 Ross on Wye Currently exhibiting in Salford Art Gallery for the Salford Open 4 and in Goose Green Gallery Altrinchamwww.goosegreengallery.com Currently exhibiting in Oyez Arts Altrincham until January.

At the root of her practice is an ongoing fascination with the notion of entanglement or tentacularity – ‘life lived along lines… a series of interlaced trails’ (Donna Haraway, 2016) – the constant, cyclical process of emotions, encounters and experiences interlacing and interconnecting, and subsequently affecting and intra-acting with mood and memories. Forever concerned with ways of portraying the transient and multi-dimensional layers of these intangible encounters and emotions, she continuously investigates and explores new and improved ways, techniques and materials. Material and process are central – her work is organic and labour intense. Materials are non-hierarchical and collecting them is intrinsic to her process. She re-uses materials and re-appropriates recycled and found materials, parts of old work and cut-outs to give them a new future and value. Through careful layering, ready-made images are juxtapositioned with fragile materials such as paper, textiles and wax. As such, techniques and materials amalgamate and develop a complex and surreal dynamic.

Caz Latham is an award-winning original artist and illustrator based in Stockport. She loves to capture the colour and character of ordinary everyday life in the North West via urban landscapes, portraits and still life. She works in several mediums; primarily acrylic for painted works and fine point & felt tip pens for drawings. She is largely self-taught with no formal training, and makes artwork in her spare time around her full-time day job. Since returning to visual art in 2018, Caz’s work has been exhibited several times across the North, has been seen (briefly!) on TV, and will feature in ‘The Manchester Art Book’, due to be published by Bloomsbury in 2025. Her illustration work was commissioned for use in a global advertising campaign for Amazon Music.

The artist, Chloe Harris, is a final year student at the University of Salford, studying a BA (Hons) Fine Art degree. Her practice consists of documentary photography, documenting her sibling’s journey through chemotherapy, capturing her emotions, feelings, and experiences in hope to give representation for others who are going through a comparable situation and to demonstrate the challenges that they may face. The theme ‘nostalgia’ plays a significant role in the artists practice as their sibling collects objects such as the teddy that has been with them since they were an infant. The teddy goes by the name ‘Everlump’ and has been with them throughout their entire life, impersonating a constant companion such as a best friend. This teddy has provided a sense of comfort and security for them during this challenging time and is a bridge to simpler times. This teddy was gifted to them by a late relative which holds significance to its importance as it holds the memory of their loved one. The teddy has been a constant companion throughout the sibling’s life as well as certain milestones from the lighthearted first sleepovers to the overnight stays at the hospital. This teddy brings the sibling a sense of comfort and protection from the challenges that they face, and the artists hopes to explore how the idea of nostalgia plays a role with being able to connect with a simpler time when it was easy and there was nothing to worry about apart from being a child and how this has turned into the them going through one of the most challenging experiences someone can go through in their lifetime. They will be able to look back at the good times whilst undergoing their chemotherapy to ignore the suffering that they are currently facing in the present. This object in this photograph is one of many that Chloe has taken to capture her sibling’s journey as well as places that she is connected to, and continues to explores ways to represent this experience for others to connect with.

Chris Williams is a self-taught printmaker and artist living in Stretford, Manchester. His art is inspired by the beauty of the British coast and countryside. Closer to home he creates detailed linocut prints of iconic buildings. His linocut print technique is influenced by his love of English and Japanese woodcut prints. Chris looks to create a feeling of longing for a place. To capture a quiet moment in time. To take the viewer to a place they can connect with or revisit in their mind. He loves this feeling of being somewhere and feeling a sense of connection and calm, to create a sense of ‘nostalgia’. His passion for creating linocut prints led to a year studying on the Complete Printmaker Course at Hot Bed Press in Salford, learning to express ideas in an array of printmaking techniques. Each linocut print can take anything up to 100 hours to draw out and carve, test proof and adjust, then repeat until the print feels finished. Once a print is hand-printed and dry (usually after a couple of weeks) Chris hand-colours each individual linoprint with watercolours, so each piece is an original artwork. He loves the freedom of painting onto a linoprint after all the hours of meticulous attention to detail.

I love exploring and discovering wonderful landscapes

I’m an Italian artist born in Cagliari, Sardinia, in 1988.

In 2014, I relocated to the city of Manchester, UK, where I found inspiration in the contrasting landscapes and cultures of my new home.

My journey took turn during the lockdown, when I discovered the beauty of painting, a passion that has since become an integral part of my life.

Drawing from the unique essence of both Sardinia and Manchester, I like to see my art as a tapestry of memories, from the colour of a Romanic church to the scraped walls of my old high school, adding influences from my favorite literature and music to the everyday life out in the streets of Manchester.

Through my work, I aim to share these feelings and the essence of my journey with anyone who wishes to embark on it with me.

Fred H is a self-taught artist from Manchester, briefly transplanted to the plains of mid-Cheshire, now back in the city centre being inspired by its ever-changing landscape.

Each picture is sourced from photographs taken whilst trekking round the city streets or admiring those same streets from above.

Fred works in ink with no pencil preamble, and loves architecture and Manchester… except for the Arndale. That’s an eyesore

My work is rooted in place and the visual language we use to express where we are. I work with paper maps, an obsolete object to most, giving the object a new life and purpose. By cutting away parts of the map by hand, I control what information is removed and what remains of the place it once depicted.

Runnin Rats Only A Pound is a photo series documenting Blackpool and the Lancashire coastline. Largely taken at night, the series captures the fleeting memories of trips to the seaside, nostalgic sights and textures that to me are a cornerstone of British culture.

I have always immersed myself in the creative world, my particular passions being 2D visual arts and music. Illustration became a huge strength of mine when I won The Northern Design Award for Illustration (based in Leeds) for a piece of work I produced judged by Wayne Hemingway and Russell Mills. I have built up a portfolio of commercial design work most recently collaborating with film makers on ‘movie posters’, alongside which I have always continued to develop my own illustration pieces for galleries and exhibitions. I am always looking for new and exciting opportunities which challenge my design and illustration expertise. I particularly enjoy working to deadlines and having to think fast and welcome projects which test my innovation. During my time working in the arts I have developed excellent people skills which means I am confident working within a team or individually in a creative environment. I believe you can develop all the skills in the world, but my advice is work on your thought process just as much. Sometimes all the development can be done in your mind, and the execution can be a simple thought provoking image. I personally have a very fine art thinking process, but my execution is all digital now. Over the years I have explored and combined many different methods and practices. Fine Art Diploma BA Illustration MA Design

Play with Us’ is a tactile, accessible art work of 28 large dominoes, designed to be touched and played with. It encourages conversation, reminiscence, togetherness and shines a light on the importance of play. The game of dominoes transcends language, cultures, age groups and abilities. It is a game most of us have experience of. In this set, each piece is its own mini artwork, created using lino tiles and vintage books, images and lettering. The motifs are colourful, eye catching and kitch. I want to encourage visitors to touch and play with my art, to look at the pieces close up and have a more personal relationship with my art.

These works are observations of a time spent away. I use memory and nostalgia to create scenes that reflect being in beautiful places but feeling sad inside. Looking around and seeing beauty, feeling opportunity, and the stunted, lonely feeling of that juxtaposition; of what’s inside not engaging with what’s outside.

My art is inspired by the natural world around me. I love painting landscape, but I also love painting the natural forms of fruit and particularly vegetables which I feel are often somewhat disregarded as a subject. Colour, and the relationships between colours, excites me and often a painting will be based around complementary colour pairs with a limited range of colours used within a painting to achieve harmony. I am also interested in the effects of light, naturally occurring patterns and texture, and interesting forms. Increasingly I have been using soft pastels, I enjoy their immediacy, tactile nature, and the way I can layer colours, and their mark-making abilities. Using a specialist pastel surface allows me to use many layers of pastel to achieve this. I also occasionally paint in acrylic and like to experiment with different media if the subject suggests it.

Does it make sense that the nocturnal helps you see what shines? I am a UK-based, South American artist, exploring life through photography, video and illustration. I question and understand our world in order to feel more alive, by reflecting on both city dwellers and striking wildlife. And it is usually the neon colours in the deep night that inspire me to delve into a visual storytelling process that displays a strong emotion, evokes a memory or even provides a message of empathy to create a fairer society.

Over the years photography has become a meditation for me. The lack of instant results provided by film allows me to slow down, focus and prioritise. I’ve spent the time learning my craft, growing my skills and expanding into different analogue formats.

The townscape paintings entered for this exhibition opportunity are part of a larger body of work made in response to different changing urban environments and the memories and nostalgia they invoke. I collect found objects and ephemera from the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life and although I try to be objective with my subjects, the collage hidden beneath the surface is loaded with nostalgia. Obsessively collected materials such as cigarette cards, magazine articles, tickets, old tax discs, maps, pattern books and stamps. Items that have their own history sitting beneath the paint and occasionally revealed to create an interaction between the past and present. As part of my practice I search for subject matter in order to make paintings that allow me to utilise all the compositional elements to the full. I like to paint local urban landscapes creating multimedia pictures of bridges, roads, canals, industrial buildings, rooftops, traffic, street signs and building sites, especially building sites. Buildings tend to interest me more as subject matter when they are being constructed or demolished. I want to find beauty in the mundane something fresh and interesting in the everyday life of towns and cities. The layers of college material used in these mixed media townscape paintings are often made up of a mixture of random images as well as photographs and pictures that connect with the subject matter helping to create a hidden narrative.

Melissa Haigh is an artist and curator based in Manchester. Her figurative painting practice explores the rich textures of oil paint, pausing moments of everyday conversations. Capturing the essence of female friendships has become a focal point for her work, presenting painted narratives which convey shared experiences, emotion and conversations that define these connections. Haigh is interested in the unspoken dialogue of women, capturing friendships through photography, documentation and predominately paintwork. In her curatorial role she has co-curated 7 sell-out exhibitions and fundraisers in Manchester. She is interested in curating meaningful events in response to Manchester’s thriving artistic community, giving people space to exhibit. The events are methodically planned to showcase diverse talents, working with venues and creatives to ensure a seamless and memorable experience for all involved. Recent exhibitions include Connections at Stockport War Memorial, A to Z and Back Again at the Holden Gallery, Manchester Open 2024 at HOME, Figurative Forms at Neighbourhood Gallery and Nice One at Green Arches.

The healing power of the Aurora

The paintings I create explore experiences of the people that leave a lasting impression. I prise the violet from grey clouds and search for the pink and yellow hues in my friends’ flushed cheeks, the colours of giggling in our bedrooms, the shades of excitement for life. This unquenchable infatuation for the beauty of the world makes every piece of mine romantic. I narrate a version of my encounters, stories of the atmosphere and my subject’s persona onto canvas, utilising colour and mark-making in an intuitive, impasto and visceral way. Pastel stains depict my interpretation of the experience, the exaggerated colour palette permanently brands the artwork with the potency of my temporary emotions. I’ve no desire to replicate a person or scene, simply to translate what it meant to me in that moment.

Phil’s work takes inspiration from the layers of history and their presence in a particular time which are often recorded and observed in a fragmented way. His work allows a glimpse into this place and subsequently into the inner being which is often obscured by the mess and chaos of the everyday. ​ Phil has been developing Victorian processes with glass that involve hand silvering, mark making, gilding and etching. The variations of distressed silvering has a relationship with how we summon and recall memories with it’s distortions.

I have moved away from the prescriptive anchoring narratives of my earlier works, I wanted to ‘create’ rather than ‘recreate’. Though many of the works suggest a ‘place’ to me they are not intended as a visual record. They represent my attempt to simplify landscape, hoping to give the impression of immersion in the landscape, rather than rely on a limited view.

My paintings are products of imagination unleashed. The themes are about emerging and reaching our full potential. About the freedom and enjoyment of being who we truly are. I explore the playground where there is no right or wrong. Frolicking outside the box. I want to give the viewer the opportunity and permission to let their imagination make their unrestricted journey with my work. ​This is why I am particularly passionate about abstract art. It allows me to create something completely new, never seen before. My paintings are invitations and they allow the mind to have rest of any preconceptions and interpretations. There are no rules here. ​ I have mostly moved away from using recognisable symbols in my paintings. There may be a geometrical shape somewhere in there but otherwise, your thinking mind has to step aside as it can’t use the language it knows to analyse what is being seen. This is to anchor the viewer deeply into the present moment. Thoughts about what is being seen may come up afterwards and that is perfectly okay. Let it tell a story. My artwork is an integral part of my own recovery path to mental wellbeing. Whilst allowing myself to have almost no boundaries in what I create, my beliefs about myself come to the surface to be examined. I can see how the beliefs I have, have limited me in the past. This creates an place for releasing anything that is not needed any longer.

Living with chronic migraine, I feel a deep connection to things that are “broken”. On my journey, I’ve found myself re-evaluating my purpose and place in the world. I’ve often felt lost. I paint dilapidated buildings as I relate to them. These buildings can no longer serve their original purpose but still have a strong, enchanting presence about them. They’ve found a new purpose by giving nature life. We’ve both had to evolve into something new. My acrylic paintings focus on the theme of broken but beautiful, experiences/places that bring me joy and my journey with chronic illness.

In this strange time of misinformation and simulacrum I am most interested in what can be observed and how our inner reality affects that. In my techniques I use processes that erode away the mediums to create positive spaces of absence.

Sheila’s art often exudes a sense of calm which can belie the intricate nature of its construction. Sheila grew up in a crafty household where she and her sister tried out a variety of projects and her dressmaker mum taught them how to sew and mend. It was only later in life that she began to explore different ways of manipulating fabric and applying stitch to achieve artistic outcomes.

I often get very nostalgic, and at times melancholic, about my childhood spent growing up in Latvia. I had to move to the UK at the age of 13 and leave it all behind. The day-to-day life that I once knew changed drastically. My childhood in Zolitūde (the area in Rīga that I’m from) was marked by going to the local school, running around and playing with friends in the park that we could see from our flat’s window, as well as helping mum carry our shopping to the 9th floor when the dodgy Soviet-time lifts were out of use. Things that I used to see and experience on a daily basis have become something that I now get to see once a year when I go back. This image is one of many common things that I used to breezily walk past and not think much of. However now, there’s feelings of nostalgia and memories of childhood attached to it. Maybe if I had stayed in Latvia, things like this wouldn’t feel special to me and I might have never taken this photo. We all have mundane everyday things that we attach meaning to without realising, and I wanted to share one of mine. What’s yours?

Vikki Rutter is a Lomography Photographer with a main career as a television camera operator, giving her a solid foundation in visual creativity. While restoring old cameras Vikki was introduced to Lomography. This now influences her techniques, using a bellows style camera from 1951, and a Kodak Brownie from 1926 with expired 120 film she creates photos with double and triple exposures. Vikki finds landscapes to photograph in a new way, the images revealing an enigmatic metamorphosis that remains concealed until the moment of exposure. Challenging the viewer’s perception of the traditional and inviting them to explore uncharted visual territories.