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Debby Akam

Penrith
I work across media using video, collage and woodcut prints to explore threshold spaces between humans and the natural world.

Debby Akam uses video, collage and woodcut prints to engage with particular places and spaces. She is working on an on- going series of artworks, mostly made in and around her home, that articulate the metaphor of the ‘permeable home’ as a useful vehicle for re- imagining our place at home in the world.  Works on paper explore similar territory, within the traditions of Painting and Printmaking. New paintings and woodcuts are characterised by saturated colour, and overlaid slabs of decorative patterning occurring within a shallow space. They draw on organic and vernacular forms, and represent an impulse to make something uses primary forms and natural materials: wood and hand- made paper. Print and video both allow the possibility of repeating sequences in endless variations, allowing for serendipity and chance.  Debby occasionally runs print making workshops for up to 4 participants. The studio is open for visits throughout the year by appointment.

 

 

Selected Solo Installations

2017 C-art Festival: art in extraordinary places, collaboration with Gary Power, Phoebe Power, Michael Hedges

2006 FRED, Greenbelt. Video Installation, B+Q Penrith

2004 FRED Moon, Video installation, Bluebell Bookshop, Penrith

2003 Sewborwens Farm, Cumbria, Herd. Video installation

2003 Skipton, North Yorkshire, Exchange. Video installation

Group Exhibitions

2017 'Visualising the Home', Vallum Gallery, Carlisle

2017 Printfest Ulverston

2016 Cumbrian Artist of the Year, Rheged

2015 The Great Print Exhibition, Rheged

2015 Printfest Ulverston

2014 C-art at Rheged, Cumbria, painting

2014 Northern Print Biennale, ‘Print Points North’, Washington Arts Centre

Conference papers

2017 Permeable home: Re- imagining home after the flood: Visualising the Home, University of Cumbria 2017

2004 Folly Lancaster, conference paper: New Media Art and the Rural

         Environment

2005 Artist’s presentation at New Fields: Art and Agriculture

         Conference, Littoral, Leeds

2005 Artist’s presentation at Out Of The Box Into The Landscape,

          CLEAR, Cumbria Institute of the Arts

 

Major awards

2000 FUSE bursary from the Compassion in World Farming Trust and Littoral

2003 Arts Council of England

2005 Arts Council of England

Qualifications and training

2004 - PhD, University of Sunderland

1989 - MFA, Northumbria University

1981 - MA, Fine Art, Edinburgh University

 

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