Artist Talks: 2025 Residency Programme Exhibition

Join us for the launch of the 2025 BCN Residency Programme exhibition, featuring work by Sandwell and Black Country based artists Daya Bhatti, Satinder Parhar, Chantal Pitts, Molly Thompson and Courtenay Welcome.

The exhibition will be open to view from 6pm, and at 7pm the artists will be giving short presentations on the work made and research they undertook during their residencies.

The talks are free to attend, booking is essential.

The exhibition shares a culmination of the work made and research, conversations and activities that took place during their residencies. Held in partnership between Multistory and The Wolverhampton School of Art and initiated as part of Multistory’s BCN artist development programme, the residencies provide funding, time, a studio and critical support for five Black Country artists each year. This exhibition features work in progress produced during the programme, which aims to provide a space for experimentation and testing out new ideas and ways of making. The programme provides an important dialogue between the professional art scene and the art school, providing the artists in residence with access to the wonderful resources available in the art school building, and students with the opportunity to learn from those making their way as artists in the world.

Access

If you have any access requirements you would like us to be aware of, or any allergies or dietary requirements, please get in touch with us by emailing aW5mbyB8IG11bHRpc3RvcnkgISBvcmcgISB1aw==, or calling / texting / Whatsapping: 07922 571832.

The artists

Daya Bhatti Daya visually communicates the significance of traditions, histories and the hybrid British Asian identity. She brings to life the stories and experiences that have shaped her own identity, but also illustrates stories from diverse South Asian communities. Her versatile portfolio encompasses a wide array of artistic mediums from portraiture, fashion illustrations and animations to painting, textiles and the use of recycled materials. Daya blurs the lines between fashion and art, often using clothing as a vehicle for storytelling by creating wearable pieces of art. Across these various forms of expression, the common thread that runs through her work is storytelling with the aim of shedding light on narratives that are often underrepresented. Her visual expression bridges the past and present whilst creating dialogue between cultures. Her art not only expresses her connection with culture but also the value to generations before and alongside her.

Satinder Parhar Satinder has long produced large scale dry-point prints which explore the concept of interstitial spaces*. Fascinated by natural and man-made apertures, he explores empty spaces such as tunnels, vents, caves, fissures etc. These forms create an intervening space called an ‘interstice.’ It examines the structures, the interstitial spaces formed within and its relationship with the ‘object’. Do they supplement or oppose each other? The use of black and white emphasises the disparity and the unity between the interstice and interstitial space. The two colours oppose each other, yet work together. The viewer is immersed within this re-representational space through the size of the prints. Both exist in the realm of one another. One cannot exist without the other. The ‘object’ is a mere footnote in the wider spectrum.

Chantal Pitts Chantal is an interdisciplinary artist with a Fine Art undergraduate degree, a City and Guilds distinction in Furniture Design and Production, and an Art and Design Interdisciplinary Practices MA. Chantal’s practice encompasses furniture as a medium, installation, assemblage and sculpture with self-hypnosis as part of my developmental practice. Her work is self-reflective, exploring and expressing the intangible self that is beyond race and gender. Chantal’s solo show at Stryx JQ attracted the attention of the Royal College of Art, for whom she gave a series of talks on her practice.

Molly Thompson Molly is a multidisciplinary artist, using elements of sculpture, installation, sound and video in her practice. Molly’s work explores the act of preservation as a tool for recalling lived narratives, connecting sound, film, and sculptures. By creating ambiguous narratives around personal experiences, she observes the synchronicities with memories being fiction and/or phantoms. She is drawn to the past as an uncanny feeling, relying on found materials as a pillar for storytelling.

Courtenay Welcome Courtenay is a multi-disciplinary artist, using elements of painting, sculpture, drawing, photography and installation in their work. Courtney’s work aims to expand our understanding of sculpture and painting, with a special interest in the ways that these mediums can become one; and exploring the rich complexities of race, memory, space and time. Held by a critical infrastructure that examines pre-existing texts, these texts illustrate dreams, love, race relations and revolutionary thought. Courtenay documents transitions from one embodiment to another, while critically addressing the ways in which these transitions are perceived by institutional means. Often these documentations are bodies of material culture captured though photography – speaking specifically to identity construction and lifestyle; disrupting pre-existing ways of looking and thinking about images and objects in space. Experimental mark makings in relationship to the body and its emotions, these explorations are often in critical dialogue with a history of refusal. Current interests of the artist include: Black Conceptualism, Freedom Dreams, Water, Care, the role of the artist’s hands and experimental mark making.

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