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Vertebrae by Vertebrae (2025)
Vertebrae by Vertebrae (2025) Velvet, liquid plastic, 3d printed vertebrae
Various sizes
In this series of sculptural works velvet fabric drapes from 3D printed vertebrae, the ends dipped in hardened liquid plastic.
Clements connects this work to the scientific fact that certain skills, experiences or knowledge become so hardwired into the body that they slip beneath conscious control.
The biological circuitry underlying unconscious memory is found below the brain, in the spinal cord.
Titles of each individual work – from left to right:
1. Proof of Activity
2. Evidence of Attempt
3. Emotional Ache
4.Not What You Had in Mind
5. Made in Good Faith
6. Theory Fatigue
7. Practiced Sincerity
8. Something About Process
9. Guilt
10. Available for Retrospectives
11. Desperately Pleased to be Considered
12. Quiet Judgement
13. Artistic Hypocrisy
14. Cardinal Sin
15. I Have Said Something
16. Well, it’s out There Now
17. Am I A Twat?
Dumped (2025)
Dumped (2025) plastic toy truck, velvet, 3d printed pelvises, copper mesh.
H15cm x L 200cm x W 25cm
A long line of 3D-printed male pelvises is threaded together by the stem of a small green velvet brain, placed on a child’s painted, plastic, toy dumper truck.
Backbone (you ain’t got no) 2025
Backbone (you ain’t got no) 2025 Velvet, liquid plastic, 3d prints, copper.
Dimensions: L 127cm, W 40cm, H 70cm
A large green velvet brain anchors one end of a spiralling structure of hundreds of vertebrae, threaded onto copper tubing. At the far end, the vertebrae merge into a velvet drape dipped in hardened plastic. The work offers a metaphor for the ways knowledge and experience travel through and eventually become embedded within the body and the role of sensation, viscerality, and touch in the formation of knowledge.
The Images On Which We Draw
In her series of drawn and collaged work The Images On Which We Draw (2025), Clements draws over outdated educational materials – mounted postcards of the world found in a box at a car boot sale.
Collaged brains grow from intricate ink drawings of botanical trees and stem from beautifully gnarly roots that spill over these mounted postcards, once intended to shape a culturally sanitised understanding of the world.
As a child, then teenager, Clements obsessively drew over newspapers, books, and school textbooks. She filled hundreds of cheaply available scrapbooks of defaced cuttings, drawings, and photographs – finding the box of educational materials triggered memories of these long lost scrapbooks and this work revisits those fledgling sensibilities.
The Grateful Web
Welcome to The Grateful Web—the podcast that connects the rest of the world to our exciting vibrant Northern art scene. Hosted by Manchester-based artist Dr Jo Clements, this series explores the rich ecosystems of artists, curators, and cultural thinkers whose ideas and collaborations shape our cultural landscape. Through candid conversations with artists, scientists, and creative practitioners, The Grateful Web celebrates and acknowledges the generosity, collaborative spirit, support and chance encounters that are essential fuel for artists’ success.
Rooted in the Norths’ dynamic art scene, this podcast shines a light on the connections that drive creative communities—from world-renowned institutions to grassroots artist-led spaces. Whether you’re an artist, curator, art collector, gallerist or simply someone who loves art and exploring the ideas that bind us, join us as we weave new connections, explore and expand our grateful web.
This podcast has been made possible with generous support from GMCA Inspire Fund (round 3) info here and by an a-n Artists Bursary (2024-25) info here
Castlefield Gallery Spotlight
Professor Matthew Cobb at The Festival of the Brain 2023
Matthew Cobb is Professor of Zoology at the University of Manchester where he studies the sense of smell in maggots and Neanderthals. He is also an author of popular science books, including “The Idea of the Brain” (2020).
“I will look at the fundamental question of why are we interested in the brain. In particular, I will show how we came to focus on this lump of apparently inert squishy stuff in our heads, and how our ideas about what the brain does have changed over time, with technology driving our interpretations. Yesterday, we thought the brain was like a telephone exchange, now we think it is like a computer, and tomorrow?”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Cobb
The Festival of the Brain took place on March 11th 2023 at The Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery Rawtenstall. This day long festival featured a variety of guest speakers each of whom presented different areas of expertise and viewpoints all relating to aspects and ideas of the brain.
The festival took place during Clements solo show ‘Everyone In This Room is Connected to Everyone in this Room’ at the gallery (Feb 24 – May 7 2023) where she explored visual representations of the brain alongside AR and AI interactions and films.
Filming by LGBTV https://www.lgbtv.co.uk
Edited by Jo Clements
Dr Libby Heaney at The Festival of the Brain 2023
Libby Heaney is a London based artist, who works across moving image, performance, installation, sculpture and print, usually combining these with advanced technologies such as machine learning, game engines & quantum computing – a new type of computer that processes information on particles following the weird laws of quantum physics.
Heaney is widely known as the first person to make art with quantum computers. Her artwork Ent- has been exhibited across continents, has received substantial international press in places like Der Welt, Wallpaper* and Spike Art, and received the Lumen Prize Immersive Environments Award in 2022.
Title: From binary to non-binary: quantum computing and art
Overview: Imagine programming a slimeball. Taking a gooey, entangled, shapeshifting reality and massaging it in precisely the right way to solve problems that could never be solved on even the largest binary, digital computer.
This is quantum computing – a powerful new type of computer – that is being intensely pursued by big tech companies and governments around the globe. Yet hardly anyone is discussing the forthcoming quantum revolution. In this talk, I’ll use my slimy quantum art practice to unpack quantum computing. I will lift the lid on how big tech companies plan to use these tools and the radical potential of quantum computing in the arts.
Cover photo by Andrea Rossetti
The Festival of the Brain took place on March 11th 2023 at The Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery Rawtenstall. This day long festival featured a variety of guest speakers each of whom presented different areas of expertise and viewpoints all relating to aspects and ideas of the brain.
The festival took place during Clements solo show ‘Everyone In This Room is Connected to Everyone in this Room’ at the gallery (Feb 24 – May 7 2023) where she explored visual representations of the brain alongside AR and AI interactions and films.
Filming by LGBTV https://www.lgbtv.co.uk
Edited by Jo Clements
Dr Karen Lander at The Festival of the Brain 2023
Dr Karen Lander is an experimental cognitive psychologist. Her research has focused on face perception and recognition. She is also interested in why some people are better at recognising faces than others and the application of her work to criminal identification and computer animation of faces.
Her talk provides an overview of what we know about face perception and recognition addressing such questions as – why face recognition is important? what happens when face recognition goes wrong? how do we store information about faces in memory? and what makes a face attractive? We will look at face ‘illusions’ and see how well you can recognise faces.
https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/karen.lander
The Festival of the Brain took place on March 11th 2023 at The Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery Rawtenstall. This day long festival featured a variety of guest speakers each of whom presented different areas of expertise and viewpoints all relating to aspects and ideas of the brain.
The festival took place during Clements solo show ‘Everyone In This Room is Connected to Everyone in this Room’ at the gallery (Feb 24 – May 7 2023) where she explored visual representations of the brain alongside AR and AI interactions and films.
Filming by LGBTV https://www.lgbtv.co.uk
Edited by Jo Clements
Amanda Sutton at The Festival of the Brain 2023
Amanda Sutton is the Director of Venture Arts an award-winning visual arts charity based in Hulme, Manchester.
“Our vision is a world in which people with learning disabilities are empowered, celebrated, included and valued in the arts, culture and society.
Our mission is to shape a new cultural landscape where people with learning disabilities reach their potential as artists, curators, critics, audiences, participants and advocates.”
The Festival of the Brain took place on March 11th 2023 at The Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery Rawtenstall. This day long festival featured a variety of guest speakers each of whom presented different areas of expertise and viewpoints all relating to aspects and ideas of the brain.
The festival took place during Clements solo show ‘Everyone In This Room is Connected to Everyone in this Room’ at the gallery (Feb 24 – May 7 2023) where she explored visual representations of the brain alongside AR and AI interactions and films.
Filming by LGBTV https://www.lgbtv.co.uk
Edited by Jo Clements
Rachel Mason at The Festival of the Brain 2023
Rachel Mason works collaboratively to create visual imagery, including photography and moving image. She has shown collaborative projects at Open Eye Gallery and The Turnpike. Rachel is also FACT Liverpool’s Learning Producer, leading on production of FACT’s artistic programme within the Justice System and supporting on the young people’s programme. Whether working on long term projects, facilitating workshops or creating spaces for people to connect, her projects all revolve around establishing a dialogue and working cross disciplinary.
How I See It is a collaborative art project between Rachel and Anita, who has synaesthesia. Her synaesthesia manifests as every single word having a correlating internal image, some photographic and some 3D forms. Most are not a direct link to the word itself, with some words (mainly people’s names) producing a more prominent image, which is easier to articulate than others. This is a process based project learning about synaesthesia, articulation and representation through dialogue and photographic exchange
https://www.rachelmasonphoto.co.uk
The Festival of the Brain took place on March 11th 2023 at The Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery Rawtenstall. This day long festival featured a variety of guest speakers each of whom presented different areas of expertise and viewpoints all relating to aspects and ideas of the brain.
The festival took place during Clements solo show ‘Everyone In This Room is Connected to Everyone in this Room’ at the gallery (Feb 24 – May 7 2023) where she explored visual representations of the brain alongside AR and AI interactions and films.
Filming by LGBTV https://www.lgbtv.co.uk
Edited by Jo Clements
After This After (2023)
Giclee Print on aquarelle rag paper (28cm x 21cm) Limited edition of 10.
Photograph of a velvet and glitter sculpture
Documentary by Maria Ruban to accompany the exhibition Everyone in this Room is Connected to Everyone in this Room
The Glittering Centrepiece of the Whole Fucking World
The Glittering Centrepiece of the Whole Fucking World (2023) velvet, copper, expanding foam, scaffolding. 160cm x 100cm
Photo Credit @JulesLister
This work is constructed from hand sewn velvet representations of the human brain arranged as a ‘brain garden’ where colours are organised into groups, or tribes, or displayed as lone actors existing amongst those tribes.
The work is inspired by Clements’ ongoing research into visualisations of the brain, how we value knowledge, both human and otherwise, concerns about the brain being the last bastion of privacy (particularly in light of the advent/threat of brain chip technology) the synchronicity of brain waves between like-minded people and the reclamation of land via plant intelligences that science is only just beginning to understand.
What Has Been Comes Not Again
What Has Been Comes Not Again (2022) 110cm x 160 cm giclee print on Aquarelle Rag paper
Photo Credit @JulesLister
An arrangement of hand sewn velvet brains are presented as a still life. Plastic insects infect the scene and an avocado sits in the background. Inspired by Dutch flower paintings and the surrealist movement the scene depicts Clements’ interest in incongruous artificial displays that presents objects that are simultaneously beautiful and disturbing.
This tableau is a meditation on the macabre and the mundane, where objects are rendered artificial and inert. The velvet brains, represent the death of organic intellect reduced to beautiful artifice representing an underlying dread of artificial intelligence and the erosion of human intellectual sovereignty.
The Machine Stops
The Machine Stops (2022) giclee print on Aquarelle Rag paper 110 x160cm
Photo Credit @JulesLister
Hand-sewn velvet brains are arranged as a still life, juxtaposed with objects that allude to autobiographical moments from Clements’ working-class upbringing to present a surreal telling of personal history.
Each piece of ephemera is carefully selected and strategically placed, creating a dialogue with the central, dominating, still life arrangement of artificial brains.
The title The Machine Stops is taken from a short, science fiction story by EM Forster, that Clements first read as a young teenager, that describes a future completely controlled by machines.
What if we’d never known this?
What if we’d never known this? (2023) velvet, expanding foam, mdf, crin 100cm x 80cm x 5cm
Two velvet brains are attached to a set of velvet emoji lips—the emoji symbol for flirting. It’s a cheeky nod to the enigma of desire and the tension between intellect and emotion in a world where a simple icon can carry a universe of meaning.
Photo Credit @JulesLister
What if you’d never seen that?
What if you’d never seen that? (2023) velvet, expanding foam, mdf, crin 80cm x 80cm x 5cm
A pair of emoji eyes oddly grafted onto a brain ‘nose,’ gaze to the right, reflecting the troubling ascent of right-wing ideologies globally, filtered and warped through the lens of social media.
Photo Credit @JulesLister
Nest
Nest (2023) velvet, copper, expanding foam, mdf. 150cm x 40cm x30cm
Photo credit @JulesLister