Founded in 2021, Art School Plus is breaking new ground in empowering early career artists to use their skills and vision to reignite communities through impactful and intelligent public realm work. It achieves this by delivering an intense week-long, in-person training course with a small cohort of carefully selected artists and practitioners designed to equip participants with the practical experience and mindset to respond to public commissioning opportunities and deliver considered, impactful work.
Zillah Bowes
Zillah is a Welsh/English multi-disciplinary artist with a practice in film, photography, poetry and sculpture. Her work often explores the relationship between the individual and the natural environment. Her ongoing connection to nature informs her practice across all mediums.
With a spiritual enquiry around climate change and biodiversity, Zillah’s work has recently moved towards a broader interdisciplinary practice utilising installation, sound and found objects, among others. Recent work uses moonlight – neither darkness or light – to examine human and plant life and the transition between them, and explores plant-human connection.
Zillah has won several recent awards for her work including the British Journal of Photography International Photography Award and National Museum Wales Purchase Prize. She has undertaken residencies with Jerwood Arts, Cove Park and Hypha Studios among others, and was selected for FLAMIN/Film London’s Pave Your Path in 2023.
Mez Kerr Jones
Mez was born in South London and grew up in South Wales, and has lived and worked between the two capitals. Her practice explores the connections between power and spatiality, place, profit and ownership. Working site-responsively, her work seeks to understand the relationships formed between a place and its inhabitants, where questions and ideas are articulated through actions and materials.
Mez graduated from the Sculpture and Environmental Art programme at the Glasgow School of Art and balances her artistic practice with teaching; as a Lecturer in Fine Art on the Foundation course and Ceramics Technician at Kingston School of Art. She has worked on public art projects with the Queens Cross Housing Association in Glasgow, HMP Greenock, Parc Prison in Bridgend, and the Woodlands Trust Dumbarton, whilst also maintaining a studio-based practice.
Mez joined Art School Plus to meet other artists with an interest in developing art for social good, and a desire for new collaborations and conversations about public art. With the Art School Plus community, she hopes to explore the meanings and purposes of social engagement, how artists can be agents for change, and build her understanding of the creation of public artworks.
Keep an eye on our website to read more about Zillah and Mez's experience on the Art School Plus scheme.
