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CHRISTOPHER SACRE
Christopher Sacre studied BA (Hons) Fine Art Sculpture at Wolverhampton University. His 2010 installation ‘See What This Man Gave Birth to After Using 2000 Condoms in 22 Days’ marked a creative turning point shifting his work from more traditional, nature-related sculpture to the conceptual.
He has continued to explore the possibilities of his sculptural forms whilst pushing his work into unfamiliar territory with drawings, paintings and digital art prints.
Since 2000, he has worked extensively with galleries and museums around the country delivering creative art events in British Sign Language (BSL) and spoken English.
In 2016, Christopher established SEE AND CREATE CIC, enabling signers and non-signers to have a greater opportunity to participate in inclusive, creative arts programmes. Based at Sun Pier House in Chatham, SEE AND CREATE offers a wide range of creative events working in partnership with skilled local artists to ensure diversity and choice in their offer.
JANE PITT
Jane Pitt is an artist based in Chatham Intra. She makes installations that include digital and live sound, listening, voice, text and image, often in active participation with the public; on land, water and in moving vehicles. Her work evokes a heightened awareness of environment.
She has a reputation for sensitivity to both the environment and the people she makes work with.
Her experiences running away with French Circus Archaos and working with Mischief La-Bas (Scotland) & Cie Jamais 203 (France) confirmed her desire to work across disciplines in non-traditional spaces available to everyone.
Her work includes: ‘The Intertidal Choir’ vocalising the River Medway shoreline; multi-speaker installations such as ‘Everyone says..’ composed with multilingual greetings recorded in communities in Dorset and Medway; temporary large scale window works for museums and sound sculptures spurting vocalised water sounds in Germany. She has initiated international interdisciplinary collaborations between Kent and Brazil as well as residencies in France and Sri Lanka.
JAKE WOOD
Jake Wood is an artist based in Gillingham, Kent, whose work spans performance, sculpture, collage, and projection installation. Drawing on a culture that is concerned with de-bunking the ideas of fitness, work, and exercise, he explores this by integrating his own use of the gym and physicality into his performances using tongue-in-cheek humour and slapstick comical gestures.
He enjoys the unapologetic attitude and approach that performative work offers – turning up to a place with his homemade props, doing what he needs to do, and then exiting again. Jake considers his practice inherently intrusive, invading different kinds of spaces and environments with the general public becoming unwitting participants captured on video.
As an artist, he has recently been exploring the intersections between bodybuilding and queerness through being a ‘gay bodybuilder,’ seeking to make audiences aware that queering spaces exist.
SARAH BLACKER-BARROWMAN
Sarah Blacker-Barrowman is an Australian born archaeologist turned milliner, who calls Medway home. She creates ready to wear collections of classic hats, fabulous fascinators, and unique bridal headwear. She also loves to undertake one-of-a-kind bespoke commissions and striking statement headpieces.
Using traditional skills, a collection of specialist blocks, and tiny hand sewn stitches, Sarah crafts each piece of headwear by hand in her studio. Drawing inspiration from her lifelong love of vintage style, she also often adds a dose of the statement costuming seen in her other former life in the cabaret world.
Including elements of recycled vintage jewellery is a favourite feature of her recent work. Her work has featured in ‘Frankie’, ‘Quirky Wedding Magazine’, and ‘The Lady’, and been included in exhibitions at London Hat Week and in Rochester Art Gallery.
MICHI MASUMI
Michi Masumi (she/her) is a Phoetrystra (Photo Poet) working across photography, digital arts, AI, poetry, and design.
Her projects focus on social concepts vs self-identity through intersectional portraiture that highlights mental health, addiction, female social struggles, politics, and Black British diversity.
Michi has a BA(Hons) and an MA in Photography from University for the Creative Arts, Rochester.
She is currently researching for her Ph.D. (Thesis & Practice) at Canterbury Christ Church University: ‘The Future of Culture, Politics, and Activism: Black Aesthetics and Intersectionality within British Art, and the role of AI, NFT Art, and social media within the management and narration of Black British Art.’
She is the founder of ‘The Black Art Hub’ (Home | The Black Art Hub – make highlighted a link) based at her studio at Nucleus Arts, Chatham. Her goal is to become the Hub’s main curator after completing her PhD. She believes that her purpose is to provide a long-term platform for the voices of British marginalized communities, assisting with bringing discussions to the forefront about the reality of living in deprived areas and intersectional social bias.
ABOUT MEDWAY
Medway is an urban conurbation (population 280 000) of five small towns – Strood, Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham and Rainham – nestled alongside the River Medway in the South East of England within the Thames Gateway regeneration zone.
2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the closure of Chatham Naval Dockyard in 1984, one of the largest employers in the area with a loss of 20 000 jobs and an international reputation for excellence in skills and education in shipbuilding that was recognised across the world.
Since 1984, while the area has struggled socially and economically, it’s artistic community has grown and thrived locally, regionally and internationally with creative practitioners who studied at the art school (variously known as Medway School of Art, Kent Institute of Art and Design and University for the Creative Arts, Rochester)and locally-based musicians going on to build extensive international careers : Billy Childish, Tracy Emin, James Taylor (James Taylor Quartet), Nitin Sawhney and Zandra Rhodes, among them.
With the art college being closed in 2023 and sold for redevelopment into luxury flats, and the area predicted to be one of the largest growing urban conurbation outside London in the coming years, this seems an important moment in time to be fore-fronting the voices of the next generation of artists embedded in the area.
THE OLD HIGH ST INTRA
Our first four films have been made in The Old High St Intra, a street linking Chatham and Rochester, recently designated a High Street Heritage Action Zone through funding from Historic England. This is supporting the area to become a cultural and creative hub hosting a rich mix of artists, creatives, makers, cafes and restaurants in under-used historic buildings that are currently in need of refurbishment and conversion.
This microcosm of Medway as a whole has welcomed the incomer and the outsider for over a century.