Announcing the successful recipients of the Axis Bursary

“I am really excited to use this bursary to invest in new equipment, as well as support my time to research and develop a new project around physical disability in immersive technology. The bursary is also a much needed contribution towards a potential office/studio move in the near future, due to the physical limitations of my current space.”

John Whall uses digital tools and materials to creatively engage audiences with arts and contemporary culture. His work is a fusion of digital and participatory practice, through collaborative and co-creative processes, with a focus on creating together. This involves the developing of processes that translate complex digital practice into accessible creative activities, which inspire and empower audiences in the creation of immersive experience.

“I work with cold wax and oils, and increasingly - found pigment. I am excited to use the bursary to expand my knowledge around using waste stream pigment in paint, to visit artists who work in this way, as well as creating a few small studies using pigment from the redevelopment of Spode Pottery Works.”

Landscape has always been more than a subject in my work—it is a conversation, a space of inquiry, and a way of rooting myself in place. 

As an abstract landscape artist, I explore the relationship between memory, emotion, and geography, translating the experience of being in a place into layered compositions of colour, texture, and movement. 

“In October 2025, following my Axis Critical Friend Conversation with digital artist Antonio Roberts who curated Patterns & Process, I started using a free visual programming tool that he recommended.

I have since reached a technical limit with my programming skills, so I applied for the Axis Bursary to fund the support of a specialist—musician and creative coder Charlie Hooper-Williams—who can help me devise a technical specification for a potential prototype—a future audiovisual immersive work.

In this future work my embroidered house-puzzle, c0de to Home: A Series of O Liners 2024, could be transcoded into a digital work, using a functional yet unproductive algorithm, resulting in a form of communication endlessly in the making.”

My practice revolves around a "scattered methodology"—a constellation of objects, images, contextual references, and processes—in which the impact of interconnected structural forces and the psychological reorientation that is needed to try and comprehend the things that feel impossible to talk about or touch upon directly—can be orbited around.

“I will use the bursary to further my research into transcendental experiences relating to disability, sickness and m/otherhood, isolation, inherited illnesses, and ancient folkloric practices of healing in nature. I am going to use the bursary to buy some books I want to read and attend a quantum hypnosis session to better understand spiritual and haunted experiences of sickness and m/otherhood. The research will inform some new work I am making.“

Laura Lulika is an artist whose experiences of being a disabled queer neurodivergent and working-class parent shapes their creative practice. When released from periods of being bed/house-bound, Lulika can usually be found sat on their stoop or gardening in their front yard, developing their medicinal garden, often surrounded by several curious neighbourhood kids.

Tracing wiggly lines from ancient to contemporary storytelling methods is the main thread of interest that runs through all of Lulika’s experiments. Speculative narratives grow from the absurd or everyday, allowing the work to expand on lived experiences of medical mysticism, sick deities and rural counterculture. 

Using whatever materials they can get their hands on, scrap, natural or digital, Lulika enjoys making from what is readily available with a conscious consideration for the environmental need for degrowth, as well as limiting material toxins for personal access reasons.