Queerfest Norwich 2024
Rachel Collier-Wilson (they/them)
Co-Director and Curator
Rachel is a fine artist/printmaker. They established Queerfest Norwich in 2023 to coincide with LGBT+ History Month. Their curating work grew from a keenness to support other Queer creatives in their practice and provide a professional platform to showcase and sell Queer-made work. In 2022 Rachel wanted to explore and promote stories of the Queer experience. They started talking to others about events that would be of value to the Queer community and ended up organising a month-long curated arts programme.
Rachel’s practice includes figurative portraiture, drawing and printmaking. They are interested in exploring memory and emotion and considering the relationship between the narrative of portraits, the memories they represent and how they evoke a sense of identity.
Leanne Collier-Wilson (she/they)
Co-director
Leanne has been supporting Rachel’s artistic life for 30+ years and was part of the Queerfest team in 2023. She has social work and therapy training and is passionate about the well-being of young Queer people.
Sakib Khan
Guest Curator ‘Interrupt’
Sakib is a multidisciplinary artist, curator and producer. Their creative practice crosses the mediums of digital, textile and more traditional drawing and collage. They have worked in fashion, performance and the arts over their career.
As an artist, Khan’s work aims to weave together the many different strands of their intersectional identity. They are a Queer neurodivergent person of South Asian heritage, and this intersectional identity has become an unconscious underlying influence across their work.
Richard Sawdon Smith (he/him)
Artist and Advisor
Richard Sawdon Smith is Professor of Fine Art and Director of Fine Art and Photography at Norwich University of the Arts. Recognised as an internationally established Queer artist for his work with AIDS cultures, his photographic practice has been published, exhibited and screened extensively around the world. He a Patron of Norwich Film Festival, Trustee of Norwich Pride, Trustee of the Council for Higher Education in Art & Design, on the Editorial Advisory Panel of the Journal of Photography & Culture and Reviewer for Compendium Journals. He is a member of the Visual AIDS Archive Project in NYC for whom he has curated and been selected for a number of their ‘virtual’ exhibitions. A former founding Board Member of bookRoom Press, previously on the Editorial Advisory Board of Mustard TV, and a winner of the National Portrait Gallery Photographic Portrait Award. He is Co-author of Langford’s Basic Photography and The Book is Alive!
Zana
Artist and Curator zines
Zana is a mixed-race (Kurdish and English), queer, neurodivergent and gender non-conforming, multi-disciplinary creative. Growing up in a conservative family and society in Kurdistan they were very isolated but found joy in creating works that allowed them to express in private what they had to mask in public. Now living out and proud in the UK, their work touches on queer identity, Kurdish culture, and the beauty of finding a chosen family to belong to. They’re currently developing a new project titled Disappointment Magazine that will feature art, poetry, creative writing and more, due to be published early 2024.
Arlo Lawton (they/he)
Curator Photography and Printmaking
Arlo is a non-binary, transmasculine creative, based in Norfolk.
Elaine Humpleby
(she/her/them)
Artist and Curator Ceramics
After a full career as an Art Teacher Elaine now works full time as an Artist. She is a Founder member of the Network of East Anglian Art Teachers, working closely with Norwich University of the Arts to provide support to the community of Art Educators in the region. Elaine works with Pride and Queerfest. She is a member of the Anglian Potters and the London Potters communities