Rachel Collier-Wilson (They/Them)
Instagram @rachelmcw 
Website: www.creativewithline.com

The Trace of Connections

Raw, defiant, and vulnerable all at once, tracing connections with thread,  between bodies, suggesting fragility, but there’s strength in the connecting threads.The suggestion of an upper bodies without ever fully defining it. The wire outlines torsos, slightly uncomfortable,  unresolved, moved away from the certainty of what a body looks like. 

The bodies appear without comfort, shaped by concealment in plain sight. The work holds tension rather than answers, inhabiting the space where sexuality is concealed, but we still connect.

Andy Judd

‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place’
Video
NFS

A personal reflection on identity,  resilience, and becoming. Through the experience of navigating being “between a rock and a hard place,” it explores the pressures of expectation and the act of concealing the self to fit in. The poem traces a journey of unfolding towards self-acceptance, queer identity, and connection with others who carry their own lived experiences of joy, loss, and survival. Ultimately, it speaks to shared humanity.

Casey Jackson
Website: www.caseyj2000.com

‘Five Guys, Fiveways’

Printed reflective composite 

aluminium panels

Sounds like fun doesn’t it! A roundabout like Fiveways offers many choices, perhaps the most tempting in this instance is Five Guys. The route that results in a satisfied appetite. In every choice however, many routes are left untrodden. This Norfolk road sign sits at a junction on the A11 southbound heading toward London. I display this sign as a marker of my life heading from Norfolk to London, while certainly leaving a piece of myself behind.

David Shenton (He/Him)

David Shenton is an ancient queer and cartoonist, who doesn’t like being told what to do – especially by knitting patterns and the odd recipe.

Instagram: @d.shenton

Francesca Alaimo (They/Them)

‘Sewing And Stitching’

My Storyboard
Mixed media on starched Japanese paper, waxed and sewn on canvas

This piece is a journey from my childhood to now. Old photographs and delicate pages of my mother’s notebook from 1945, where I have superimposed my thoughts and self-portraits, are glued to starched wax-coated paper that resembles a skin, a map or a rugged terrain. Memories and images of trans-formations, masked theatrical figures, names of cities and places that have shaped my identity, as well as words that speak of both harm and freedom, appear all over, like a storyboard of my own gender questioning and discovery.
Website: www.francescaalaimoartist.com
Instagram: @francescaalaimoartist

Krishna Shanthi

The blue figures are gods, sacred, powerful and Krishna Shanthi (b. 1988, Pooneryn, Sri Lanka) is a queer Tamil-Canadian British multidisciplinary artist based in London. Through image-making, research, and critical inquiry, his practice explores everyday human experiences and the ways identity is shaped through memory, culture, and representation. He is currently drawn to the colour blue and its associations with remembrance, forgetting, and the formation of queer identity.

In From the Blue Series, Shanthi challenges the Western, white gay perspective that has long dominated mainstream queer spaces. Addressing themes of race, religion, and desire, he reimagines the queer pin-up by transforming bodies traditionally positioned as objects of desire into mythological figures such as Krishna and Vishnu. Through this process, he proposes alternative visual narratives of queer identity rooted in South Asian cultural histories and spiritual traditions.

Instagram: @_skrishnanana

Matt David (They/Them)

The Glass Bucket

Cyanotype, Soda Crystals, Watercolour

I wanted to explore my queer heritage through acts of remembrance and archiving. Looking back to my hometown of Dundee, I discovered The Glass Bucket, a bar known within the local queer community as a meeting place, despite never being publicly identified as such. Green carnations appear throughout the work, recalling the coded symbol popularised by Oscar Wilde in the Victorian era, when queer people used them to discreetly recognise one another, as an arch of celebration and welcome.

Instagram: @mattdavidartist
Website: mattdavid.co.uk

Patrick Will Baker (He/Him)

Instagram: @create.atwill

Connected Wire on board

This wire relief explores relationships and our desire for connection – even in busy scenarios we often turn to distraction rather than talking to those next to us. Growing up under the shadow of Section 28 left its scars, a guarded nature and hesitancy being among them.That can leave physical interactions disjointed and imperfect, as is the wire. Yet, like the shadows cast, in these encounters, we can unconsciously affect others way beyond our physical presence.

Sakib Khan (He/Him/They)

‘Club Kali Mirror – Stand Proud and Be Seen’ 2024

Mirror, Wood and Mixed Medium

This interactive installation invites the audience into the spotlight to share thoughts via selfies or Post-it notes. Drawing from a South Asian palette of red, purple, and gold, classical Indian motifs, and the bathroom mirrors of the legendary Club Kali at The Dome, the work celebrates spaces beyond the dancefloor. These intimate areas foster unexpected friendships and quiet reflection, crucially serving as safe havens for the LGBTQ+ community to physically transition from outer conformity into their authentic, queer selves.

Instagram: @sakib_khan_creates

Theodore Cheverton

The memory of flesh 

Oil paint on canvas

An exploration of the memories lost, only to be held in our flesh. The eradication of history leaves those who have experienced it to keep it alive, in defiance of a society deciding who is and isn’t worthy of being remembered. This is the constant fight against the deletion of ourselves through the physical connections of a community not allowed to exist outside of people’s minds. This piece explores memory as the queer communities’ single most important ally in the face of erasure.

Instagram: @terribletedsart