neo: exhibition

LAYERS Online Exhibition 2024

neo: artists are delighted to announce “LAYERS” group online exhibition, where we are celebrating our ever-growing community of North West and international artist members.

Online exhibition 1st – 30th November 2024

Through this online exhibition, each of our 17 artists are showing their diverse unique art practices and process in response to “LAYERS”.

Heather Burns

‘Girl in the night garden with tiger, Singapore’, Oil bar and oil pastel on handmade paper, 24x36cm, 2024

Incorporating ‘layers’ for me in my art practice often relates to the medium used and drying times. What I can and cannot do with a particular medium to be precise.

I often have to wait for a layer of oil-bar, for instance, to dry before I can make more marks on top, be it with more oil-bar or another medium, say stitch. If I do not inchoate marks result.

This can be frustrating to begin with, but invariably the feeling is soon replaced with gratitude. A slowing down of practice. The marks themselves may be made quite quickly, or slowly in the instance of hand stitching. But it all adds to the experience of reflective practice and being in the flow.

Having to wait for layers to dry. Being present with the medium and then waiting. A myriad mini decisions inherent in the temporal nature of making art.

Luke Saxon

Seasons, Collage, 50.8 x 50.8cm, 2024, Luke Saxon

For me, layers represent time and the passing of time. My work often looks at the banal and the everyday. Recently I’ve been exploring seasonal change and how it affects our mood and mental well being.

Charlotte Wood

The Dolphin, AI and I, fabric and embroidery threads, women’s UK 10, 2024,

Layers are fundamental to my artistic practice, appearing throughout my work. Through my stitches, I tell stories that evolve over time.

Much like a palimpsest, which inspired this project, older narratives remain visible beneath new ones. Each layer building upon the previous one, a deeper story through stitches, textures and techniques.

In this project, I incorporated AI, adding a new layer to my process. AI became a key collaborator, helping generate new ideas and pushing me toward more abstract interpretations.

I integrated these digital designs with vintage free-hand embroidery machines.

Generative AI can’t create without a prompt and the output always contains visible traces of what you put in. Each layer, whether digital or handcrafted, contributes to the overall narrative, forming part of a greater visual language.

Stewart Knights

CCTV was put up in ‘high-risk’ areas’, Medium: Gouache and ink on board , Size: 30 x 30 cm,Year: 2024

Layers of paint on layers of canvases containing layers of meaning, all layered up and stored away nicely.

Within my practice I try to embrace this idea of layering – literally in terms of my process, sketching before applying a first coat, then another and another, or poetically layering ideas on top of one another until an artwork or series of works are complete.

I think of layers and layering as refinement, getting closer to the root of a thing.

Susan Syddall

NESTING , Machine Stitch on Paper Sculpture, 30 x 30 x 30, 2024,

In practical terms my work often involves layers and layers of stitch to create 3D and 2D pieces.

This sculpture was made by free machine stitch onto paper, moulding it into a form. Initial inspiration for these pieces came from watching a bird gathering moss, grass and twigs to make a nest. I myself create my pieces in a similar way, layers of nervous creative energy building an expression of something within.

Ian Irvine

Title Invasion Of Vermeer, medium collage, size 21x18cm

This collage has some physical layers – one layer of paper on top of another – and other layers in the sense of meaning. The ‘base’ layer is a reproduction of a painting by Johannes Vermeer.

To this I have added pieces of work by twelve other artists, mostly 20th century, and transformed the key image into a strange, impossible room ‘invaded’ by these unwanted guests.

So, it’s also asking – how many artists do you recognise? It’s a historical mash-up of ingredients. It is made with just paper, scissors, scalpel and glue.

Louise Garman

Title : Bird on a Wirem Medium Silkscreen / Cyanotype, 60×60. Year 2024

Nerissa Cargill Thompson

What Lies Beneath (2024) sculpture, recycled clothing and bicycle wheel, 58 x 58 x 16 cm, NCT

My work explores where nature meets man made. Layers of recycled textiles represent growth oozing through the gaps in urban spaces or consuming fly-tipped waste in the edgelands.

Nature fighting back forming new landscapes.

David Winning

Untitled, Oil on board, 400×400, 2023,

Lily Rose

Rest, Oil on Canvas, 11 x 14” 2024

Tom McMahon

Distant Horizons, Medium : Digital Image (Photograph), Size : 78cm x 52cm, Year : 2023

Sandra Bouguerch

And Then, Audio, Spoken-word, 1 min, 2024, Sandra Bouguerch with credit to Adam Michaluk

In a response to the meaning of LAYERS I have decided to create a spoken word audio piece inspired by a poem I came upon by chance online.

The poem is penned by an unknown author and the words within the writing resonated with me.

Link below..

on.soundcloud.com/RveWQopp4JpThuHK8

Dorothy Ellin

Three ceramic images 8 cm square inspired by sea shore at Ramsgate where sand, chalk, seaweed and sea constantly change and overlap.

Vicki Jones

A work in progress, Acrylic, 29.5×42, 2024

Scarlet Mayer-Payne

‘Last Nights Bra’, Oil on Canvas, 80 X 61 cm, 2024

Bryn Richards

Untitled digital collage, 2896 x 2896 2024

Layers to me are the building blocks and the tool for discovery. Through this tool, I ‘am finding these unique abstract forms, structures and transforming them into something new. To bring them back to life through material processes before they are loss to time and decay.

Where this digital decaying collage is part of an ongoing series, that is influence by the urban environment and exploring the narrative of decay and rebirth.

In each new addition to the series, opens an new aspect to the unknown or unseen visual form.

Sally Tomato

“Water is wet”, Sculpture, 2024