Fellowship 2024

Four artists. Two seasons. 
A year of shared work and discovery

2024 marked the second year of the Axis Fellowship. Entirely self-funded by Axis, it represented our direct investment in artists at pivotal points in their careers. The fellowship focuses on time, focus and community. It offers artists the chance to develop their practice alongside peers, guided by mentoring and supported with resources that make a real difference.

Across two three-month seasons, from autumn into spring, the four Fellows shared work, tested ideas and explored new ways of connecting. This archive traces that year, from the selection process to the work created and the moments that shaped their experience.

Guided by Guest Selectors

The 2024 Fellows were chosen with the help of four guest selectors, each bringing a distinct perspective to the process:

• Harriet Bowman: Multidisciplinary artist and 2023 Axis Fellow, whose own experience in the programme offered valuable insight into what makes a strong cohort.
   
• Diana Ali: Visual artist, independent international curator and Axis Trustee, committed to amplifying under-represented voices in the arts.
   
• Sunshine Wong and Zoë Sawyer: Co-directors at Bloc Projects, known for curating collaborative, critically engaged projects across the UK.

Their combined experience shaped the shortlist and ensured diversity of practice and approach in the final selection.

• Meet the Guest Selectors

The Fellows Are Announced

"It is an honour to welcome Uma, Asuf, Hannah and Sean... I cannot wait to see how each of these artists will inspire the cohort and Fellowship experience as we develop together over the coming year." 

Harlan Whittingham, Artist Development and Commissions Producer

Uma Breakdown

Artist, writer, and award-winning game designer whose work often weaves animals, horror, solidarity, love, grief, and joy. Lives and works in Gateshead.

Asuf Ishaq

Works with sculpture, sound, moving image, and installation to explore migration, hybridity, and the post-colonial body as an archive. Based in the UK, MFA Fine Art from Goldsmiths.

Hannah Leighton-Boyce

Sculptor and installation artist exploring material, sensory, and somatic relationships, often site-responsive and deeply rooted in place.

Sean Roy Parker

Visual artist, writer, and fermentation enthusiast engaging with food justice, slow craft, and collaborative problem-solving.

• Read the full announcement

Behind the Scenes: The Cohort Experience

Away from public view, the fellowship created space for sustained learning and exchange. Monthly cohort meetings allowed Fellows to share work in progress, test ideas and offer constructive challenges. Each artist also led a session, introducing influences, questions and materials that shaped their practice.

Fellowship Reflections

"The Axis Fellowship has been a much needed space to reflect on my current practice and plan for the future. Thanks so much to Harlan and the team for having me!" 

Uma Breakdown

“I enjoyed the monthly sessions with other artists on the fellowship; these sessions helped me open new perspectives in my practice. The fellowship was useful to keep up the momentum of my thinking, making and planning, and it provided a renewed energy towards my practice, which I am grateful for.” 

Asuf Ishaq

"The Axis fellowship provided a rare gift of a funded period of support, enabling me to really make the most of the time and opportunity as I needed, and without pressure. The co-designed sessions were supportive and generous. It was great to connect with Uma, Asuf, and Roy; to get to know their work and glimpse into their ways of thinking and making. The mentoring sessions have connected me with other artists and curators I have admired and wished to speak to for a while. It's hard to put the impact of all this into words as, of course, in many ways it doesn't stop - the reflections are still with me in the studio, the connections grow and conversations ripple and continue to have an effect." 

Hannah Leighton-Boyce

"Being selected for the Fellowship was not only valuable for being able to commit time to my practice in a period of transition back towards myself after years of making public-facing work, it also brought me into the orbit of some of the most interesting and challenging practitioners I've met who shared their processes and gave critical feedback that helped develop new threads of thinking."

 Sean Roy Parker

"The aim was not just to produce outcomes, but to develop ways of working that could be carried forward individually and collectively."

Harlan Whittingham

Exploring Through Writing and Conversation

• Six Questions – Hannah and Uma in dialogue about materials, methods, and the subtle shifts a fellowship can bring. 
  Read the conversation 
   
• Averaging, Acknowledging, Living with Practices – Sean shared perspectives on sustaining creative work amid shifting contexts.
  Read Sean's essay
   
• Artist Spotlight: Asuf Ishaq – A closer look at Asuf’s layered approach to memory, migration, and material form.
  Watch the video

Curated by the Axis Fellows

A Future Without Growth, curated by Sean Roy Parker 

Sean’s selection destabilised old ideas about what art should be made from and for. Featuring works by Clare Barber, Naty Lopez-Holguin, Jenny Mellings, Anna Chrystal, Bobb Budd, Caroline Dear, Victoria Malcolm, Julian Claxton, James Winnett, and Laura Lulika, it asked: what happens when art materials as we know them are no longer available.

"Artists are inexplicably compelled to live in line with their ethics, to furiously dream for a fair future despite current crushing realities." Sean Roy Parker

• Explore A Future Without Growth
   

The Animal Double, curated by Uma Breakdown

Uma drew from The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and José Esteban Muñoz’s writing on Narcissus to frame this selection. Both explore escape through desire unbound, folding into the landscape to become something more, safe within camouflage.

"I looked for beautiful artworks which to me resonate with such images of escape and transcendence, and with queer refusal of weaponised pathologies." Uma Breakdown

Featuring works by Jess Bugler, Susan Banks, Elly Clarke, Anna F. Hughes, Victoria Rance, Rhiannon Lowe, Sarah Joy Ford, Penny Hallas, Laura Lulika, Jo Cohn, Patricia Chu, and Marianne Walker.

• Explore The Animal Double
   

A House Without Walls, curated by Asuf Ishaq

In A House Without Walls, Asuf draws from ideas of the body, architecture and the geographical location of his family house in Pakistan.

“This selection of artworks explores the living environment, rethinking and recalling memorable spaces, time spent, relationships and experiences.”
 Asuf Ishaq

Featuring artworks by Lucy Bevin, Dorothy Hunter, Henny Burnett, Sarah Feinmann, Sharon Baker, Ruth Wallace, Jilly Morris, Charys Wilson and Sally Waterman.

• Explore A House Without Walls
   

Public Conversations

Critical Friend Conversation with Hannah Leighton-Boyce

As part of the one-to-one mentoring available to Axis Members through our Community platform, Hannah took on the role of critical friend for three artists. These private conversations offered space to reflect on work in progress, test ideas, and open up new possibilities through constructive dialogue.

Beyond the Fellowship

By the year’s end, the work was still moving. Asuf joined the 2025 Fellowship as a guest selector, folding his experience back into the process.

• See the Guest Selectors for 2025
   

Why It Matters

The 2024 Fellowship was not only about what was produced. It was about how the artists worked together, learned from one another and connected with the wider Axis community.

The Fellowship continues to demonstrate how meaningful, self-funded investment in artists can create space for growth, connection and new possibilities.