Jo Clements

Jo Clements is a multi-disciplinary visual artist working between studios in Manchester, UK and Donegal, Ireland, interested in intersections of materiality and cognitive science and how complex artworks might activate different neural pathways and cognitive flexibility. Hugely influenced by speculative fiction, her images and sculptures of brains reimagined as plant like structures have become an obsessive motif in her most recent work.

Research is a constant and important part of her practice and includes archival investigations into medical and botanical imagery, neuroscientific developments and histories. She often draws upon her training as a couture milliner using those particularly unique skills and knowledge of materials, to produce surreal sculptures that use incongruous combinations of materials such as 3d printing, liquid plastic, copper and textiles. 

Her work is held in private collections in the UK and abroad.

Jo holds a Fine Art practice-based PhD and her research into artists working with regional film archives has been widely shared by those archives at conferences, film presentations and in teaching syllabuses worldwide. Her extensive back catalogue of film work reflects that research, and archival films and imagery remain an enduring presence in her art.  

Jo is the host of The Grateful Web podcast (available on ACAST, SPOTIFY and Apple podcasts).

She was the overall winner of the Greater Manchester Arts Prize in 2018, and was on the selection panel for the 2019 prize. 

Supported by a-n she completed the RD1st Coaching Programme in 2017 and  continues to work nationally and internationally to support artists and arts professionals through specialist coaching and mentoring. For information about Jo’s coaching practice click HERE 

Clements lectured on Fine Art programmes in HE for over 10 years at the University of Salford and more recently as programme leader for Film and Photography at Wrexham Glyndwr University and was previously the Educational Director of Artists and Education CIC.

In October/Nov 2020 Clements was awarded an AI fellowship with BeFantastic Bangalore focusing on Machine Learning which has contributed to her recent work and research that focuses on the proliferation, ubiquitousness and accessibility of new technologies and what that might mean in our present and future worlds.

Clements left HE in late 2020 to concentrate exclusively on her arts and coaching practices and had her first major museum solo exhibition 25th Feb- 7th May 2023 at The Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery, Rawtenstall.