Theresa Easton
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- Theresa Easton
Printmaking is central to my studio, teaching, and community practice. I use print processes as a way to critically examine new approaches to education, while creating meaningful connections with participants and students. As an accessible medium, print operates as a tool for cultural democracy—enabling, empowering, and activating both individual and collective agency.
In my practice, I make prints across a range of techniques and forms, using collaboration and co-production to build social bonds. Letterpress and zine-making become spaces of experimentation, dialogue, and intervention. They offer what I think of as a pedagogy of process—where learning and making are inseparable, and where collective creativity opens up possibilities for new ways of thinking, teaching, and acting together.
Lived Experience
I am one of the founding members of Artists’ Union England, a trade union for visually & applied artists and artists with a socially engaged practice, formed in 2014. The austerity cuts of 2012 imposed by the coalition government resulted in job losses, closures of libraries and Surestarts, many of these buildings were my place of work. The results were devasting for communities, including the council estate where I live. It was a wake-up call to get organised. Since then I continue to support grass roots activism in my local community, using my skills as an artist and privilege as a lecturer in Fine Art.
Projects & Commissions
Friends of Durham Miners Gala 2024: commissioned letterpress print.
Middlesbrough Art Weekender 2024: Collaboration with UPROOT Collective on a zine connecting themes of the UK’s hostile environment to social movements for climate justice.
Durham Miners Gala 2024: Commissioned letterpress print marking 40 years since the Miners’ Strike.
Redhill’s Press 2023-2025: A project developing creative platforms such as zines, posters and printmaking for youth voice in Durham’s coalfield community.
Helix Arts 2022-2025: Better Connect, Art on Prescription in North Tyneside series of printmaking and bookmaking workshops at Wallsend Library.
Building Bridges 2022-2024: Creative art project based at the Hatton Gallery Learning Space, Newcastle University offering a safe space for Sanctuary Seekers to create and meet socially.
Library, Archive and Heritage
Current: African Lives in Northern England Guide
Cosin’s Library, Durham University 2021
The Portico Library, Manchester 2018
Senate House, University London 2017
Robert Smails Printing Works 2015-2016
Literary & Philosophical Society, Newcastle 2007
Bookworks, Freedom Festival Hull 2018
Community Participation Projects
Current: Shieldfield Art Works: Craft Action Collective contributor using screenprinting & letterpress to talk, discuss and make together about injustice and hope.
Past: Lead Artist with East Durham Creates social engagement postal project, Zine making project with Shildon & Greenfield Community School and Apollo Pavilion, Peterlee. Lead Artist BAIT Open Door Project with settled Syrian Families. Co-organiser The OTHER Great Exhibition of the North. Commissioned Artist Festival of Thrift & PROCESSIONS 2018, Freedom on Tyne; banner & placard making 2017 and Navigator North & Festival of Thrift
2014 -2017 Co-Project Organiser Artists Book Market BALTIC
Teaching Experience
2022- current Lecturer in Fine Art Newcastle University
2015 - 2022 Assistant /Lecturer Newcastle University
2010-15 Visiting Lecturer Teesside University
Participatory Arts BALTIC Artists Freelance Team
Group & Touring Exhibitions
Women Artists Printers Portfolio 2025 Woolwich Print Fair
Process: dialogue between pedagogy & practice 2025 Dead Dog Gallery, Durham
Mirror Neurons 2024 Hatton Gallery, Newcastle
Greetings from the Toon 2024 TACO Art, Mexico City
BALTIC open 2024 Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art
Getting to Know Each other 2023 Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico
Text 2021 36 Lime St Gallery, Newcastle
Posted/Unposted 2020-21 Touring group exhibition
Pop up Pick Up 2020 Germany
Uncharted Territory 2019 St Barnabas Press, Cambridge
Take Back Control 2019 The Crypt, London
Queer Between the Covers 2018 Senate House Library
Latest Edition 2017-18 Navigator North, Middlesbrough
St Ronan’s Well, Innerleithen 2016 Robert Smails books
Absence & Presence 2015-2016 USA & UK.
Architecture, Art & Landscape 2014 Museum-Reserve Tsaritsyno, Moscow
Al-Mutanabbi Street 2010-13 International Tour
Book Triennial, Vilnius 2009 5th International Artist’s Book Triennial
Sormani Library, Milan 2007 Artist’s collective based in Milan
Articles, Publications & Podcasts
Artworks Alliance 2024 Trauma-informed Community Arts.
Left Cultures 2022 First Edition
Print Council of Australia 2021 Imprint Magazine Summer Issue
Pressing Matters 2020 Issue 11
Printmaking Today 2016 Autumn Volume 25 Issue 99
Awards & Grants
QEST Scholarship 2024-2025
Newcastle University Bartlett Legacy 2023
Catherin Cookson Foundation & Newcastle University Pioneer Fund 2022
HLF Young Roots 2014
Grants for Artists Arts Council North East 2013
Grants for Artists Arts Council North East 2010
Collections
Senate House Library, British Library, Tate Library Artists Book Collection, Future Builders, NR Foundation, Intaglio Printmaker, Northampton University, The Arthur & Mata Jaffe Centre for Book Arts, Florida, Special Collections Library Manchester Metropolitan University, Baltic Library & Archive, UAL: London College of Communication Library Zine Collection & Red Box.
Qualifications
2024 Advance Higher Education Fellowship Newcastle University
2007 MA Glass Sunderland University
2001 Post Graduate Certificate in Education New College Durham
1998 BA Fine Art (Hons) University of East London
Helping Artists Keep Going
Axis is an artist-led charity supporting contemporary visual artists with resources, connection, and visibility.