The Axis Fellowship 2025: Recipients Announced!

We are thrilled to introduce the three Axis members who will participate in this year’s Axis Fellowship, a programme designed to support early to mid-career artists in developing their practice over two intensive periods between October - December 2025 and February - April 2026. Each artist will receive £4,000 to support the development of their practice as well as guidance from Axis staff, additional guest mentoring, promotion, and a shared cohort environment to help shape their artistic development.

Thank you to all of our members who applied for this year’s fellowship.

"I'm extremely excited to introduce Anna F Hughes, Dorothy Hunter and n:u (melissandre varin) as the Axis Fellows of 2025. Not only do these artists each demonstrate a wealth of artistic talent and ability, they have also shown a dedication to community building and cohort learning. Each year's cohort shapes the Fellowship experience, and I'm eager to see how this year's fellows will build on the Fellowship's growing legacy. It's an honour to be able to share their journeys with you - watch this space!"

Harlan Whittingham, artist development and commissions producer.

We look forward to sharing the progress of our 2025 Axis Fellows with you—stay tuned for updates on their development, new projects, and insights from their time in the fellowship.

Meet this year’s Axis Fellows…

Anna F Hughes

Born 1990, UK. Anna is a visual artist, writer and researcher based in London, specialising in digital art and disability. She completed an art practice-based PhD titled Sickness in Cyberspace: Sensual Encounters in Digital Media Towards a Radically Embodied Future, as well as an MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London. Her work has been exhibited with institutions across the UK and abroad including Southwark Park Gallery, ICA, Beaconsfield Gallery, QUAD, Outpost, Hackney Picture House, Flattime House and Art Copenhagen. Anna is currently finalising her book Cybercrip Art to be published 2025/2026.

Dorothy Hunter

Hunter (b. 1988, Magherafelt) lives and works in Belfast. Her research-based practice often involves making installations that mix photography, sculpture, film, archival intervention and writing. Her work has been included in exhibitions about archives, land use, inherited histories and postcolonial conditions, such as “Strata”, CCA Derry-Londonderry, 2024; “mother tongue”, Metropolitan Arts Centre, Belfast, 2024; “Borders”, RUA RED, Dublin, 2024; and “Still (the) Barbarians,” EVA International, Limerick, 2016. She was selected for the Freelands Foundation Artist Programme in 2022 and is a graduate of the Dutch Art Institute’s Roaming Academy (2018-2020). Her current research explores the UNESCO Cuilcagh Lakelands geopark and the impact of the undiscovered underground space in the extensive cave networks of the North-West of Ireland.

n:u (melissandre varin)

n:u (melissandre varin) (b. Gonesse, France) is an atmosphere-maker based in Birmingham, UK. Working as an atmosphere-maker emerges from their Congolese sapeur heritage, and their practice as an environmental artist. They develop an ecologically care-full practice of receptivity, encounter, reciprocity and transformation, creating performances, installations, sculptures and liberatory infrastructures. Their practice invites different ways to be with change by blurring colonial lines between designers and participants and making unexpected pairings between materials and concepts. Being self-taught in the arts, they hold a master’s degree in Environment and Sustainable Development from University College of London (UCL).

n:u (melissandre varin) has collaborated with transnational artistic centres, such as Eastside Projects (GB), Ban Workshop (SE) and KutlturFabrik (LU). They have created the vision for several art initiatives, such as les ongles noirs (dirty nails) (2022-2024) - an across continents experimental art project centring play, grief, and the unknown; B.O.O.K (2020-2023) - an art collective and curatorial project supporting Black artists in the UK; and Open Call (2020-2023) - an online (now archived) platform commissioning and redistributing resources to artist-researchers. They have contributed with exhibitions, talks/workshops, and performance programmes at various institutions, including: Ikon Gallery, TaPRA, and FABRIC, among others. They have been invited to residencies such as artikulationsprozesse, PAE Aktionslabor (DE), Talking Birds (GB), Our Teaching Takes Shape As We Go international project Africa/UK: Transforming Art Ecologies (MA). They were a 2024 MAIA Fellow (GB) and are a Steering Group member at CVAN WM 2025-2028 (GB). They were a nominated recipient of the Henry Moore Artist Award 2022, a 2021 International Changemaker awardee by the City of Culture Trust and the British Council, and a Coventry Artspace in Action awardee in 2020.