#timmachin

35 & Counting: Tim Machin     

 In early February we launched ’35 & Counting’, an exhibition and online auction, marking 35 years of supporting emerging artists.

All proceeds of the online auction, launching on Thursday 16 February (5pm), will support our artist residency programme.

To showcase the 29 artworks generously donated, we have asked each of the artists to remind us about their involvement with the gallery and what a residency means to them. 

 Tim Machin     

 Tim Machin’s work transforms overlooked everyday ephemera in unexpected ways - a roll of sellotape becomes a cloud, a piece of A4 is folded into a mountain.

 Tim was born in Sheffield, UK in 1978. He studied at the Ruskin School of Fine Art, University of Oxford (1996-1999) and Wimbledon School of Art (2001-2002). Recent exhibitions include: ‘In Conversation’, Touchstones, Rochdale 2014; ‘Meanwhile’, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, 2012; ‘Sustainability’, University of Oxford Botanical gardens, 2012; ‘Undone’, Henry Moore Institute Leeds, 2010. He was shortlisted for ‘Becks Futures’ in 2006 and the ‘Jerwood Drawing Prize’ in 2001. He is represented by Bureau, Manchester, and lives in Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire.

 “I was the winner of the Aspex ‘Emergency2’ Prize in 2005, and had one of the very first exhibitions in the new Vulcan Building space in 2007 [‘Astrolabe’]. The two years between were incredibly fruitful, working towards a major show really enabled me to experiment with my practice and - with a view to working in such a large space - making the most ambitious work I'd made.”

 What does a studio/place to work mean to you?

It's somewhere to potter about. Read the paper, do the crossword. Make nice coffee. It's an office-cum-theatre where you can play with ideas and set them off on their own tracks. I always think of art as the stuff that happens beyond what you do, the things you can't explain in words easily , but which make sudden, fluid, sense. The studio is the special place this all happens (even if over time, the studios I've worked in have ranged from the glamorous purpose built, through the threadbare conversion (and currently an upcycled chicken shed).

 How have funded residencies supported your professional development, and what impact have they had on your work?