The Team
Gemma Garwood was the youngest Town Crier in the UK (Falmouth, Cornwall) for a while and started UNFAMILIARS, a multidisciplinary arts zine/event platform in Colchester in 2017. Additionally she has taught and delivered various theatre, live art, writing, devising and acting lessons and workshops at both HE and FE levels, most recently working with Norwich Theatres to deliver Town Crying/Troubadour workshops to young adults (16-25) and ESOL students.
Through 2021 Gemma created a triptych of video works for Magical Women, the development and delivery of a ritual walkshop for Sudbury Walking Arts Project, and in OTHERLAND, a deep exploration of Essex created in collaboration with Lucy Gayler.
Gemma recently landed a DYCP grant from Arts Council England and also won a coveted Firstsite Collectors Award this year. She has additionally collaborated with the “Snapping the Stiletto” project, delivering workshops in Basildon and designing an interactive pamphlet zine for a trail in Manningtree to commemorate victims of the Essex witch trials.
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She is the project Leader for The Deepenings.
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https://www.alleyesthisway.com/
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Bethan Briggs-Miller uses a variety of media to create dreamlike landscapes with a hidden narrative. Working with alcohol ink and watercolours she applies these to the paper then uses sea salt and alcohol to create different textures and patterns. This process allows scenes and characters to emerge organically with even the smallest areas containing a hidden story.
A common theme she explores is the contrast between what is observed on the surface and the hidden stories beneath. Using this location as a map to explore these ideas, a scene that is so well known to many could still reveal secrets.
Bethan is one half of the Eerie Essex podcast team, and that project has been going form strength to strength since being founded earlier this year.
https://www.instagram.com/bethanbriggsmillerart/
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Elinor Rowlands practice is moved by feelings of “otherness” offered through the prism of ritual and magic. Using repetitive/rhythmic gestures, her autistic/ADHD/synaesthesia filter explores texture, voice, recorded media & live performance. She layers sound, sculpting it around repeated images from nature.
Her work has:
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a phantasmagorical feel, overwhelming and immersive, secretive, yet particularly revealing to diverse audiences;
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been compared to a Leonora Carrington psychological landscape: At one level displaying a consciousness echoing an ancient sensibility. At another level expressing something intensely contemporary;
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been supported/presented by: ACE, Unlimited, LADA, Shape, Tate Modern, Guerrilla Zoo, Lyric, CPT, Drake Music, Disability Arts Online, EIB.
https://www.elinorrowlands.com/projects
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Associated Artists
Jo- Anne Cox Musician
Daniel Stephen Turner Musician ​
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