Join us for a behind the scenes studio visit at Spike Island. This is a chance to explore artists’ and makers’ studios, to see their working environments, their process, and works-in-progress in an informal and friendly setting.

In this visit we meet visual artist Katy Connor in her studio at Spike Island. Connor’s interdisciplinary practice explores the relationships between embodiment, technologies and materiality. Her work combines living and digital media, and considers how experiences and bodies can be reimagined within bio-technological environments.

Accompanied by Spike Island Assistant Curator, Rosa Tyhurst, during this studio visit we’ll learn about Connor’s current research and projects including her upcoming residency at The Martian House, Bristol where she is developing work around the practice of hydroponics – exploring ways to consider working with living materials, particularly in relation to the current ecological crisis.

KATY CONNOR

Dr Katy Connor gained her PhD in Experimental Media Arts with Translating the intimate: digital renderings of bio-matter into material forms through artistic research from Bournemouth University in 2016. She has presented her interdisciplinary practice at Flat Time House (2018), Art in the Anthropocene, Dublin (2019), London Science Museum (2019), and Max Planck Institute, Potsdam (2017) and has co-written two journal articles for ‘Nano-Ethics’ (2020) and ‘Interdisciplinary Science Reviews’ (both 2020). Solo and group exhibitions include: Transmediale, Berlin (2013), Lumen Prize, International Tour (2013-14), Konteksty, Poland (2017), Gossamer Fog, Deptford (2017), We The Curious (2018) and Centre of Gravity, Bristol (2020).

Connor has undertaken numerous residencies including Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol (2021), in science laboratories in Bristol University (Blood Culture: Reimag(in)ing Life at a Cellular Scale, 2017-19) and remote ‘wild’ places (Arctic Circle, 2015 and OUTLANDIA, Scottish Highlands, 2013).