ARTISTS TALKING

These profiles introduce practice that is time-based.

It presents Antony Hall, who studied in Cardiff and Manchester, and Tim Brennan who has a BA from Hull, attended the Slade School for two years and took an MA in Public History and Historiography at Ruskin, and whose practice of walks or manoevres operates outside the traditional gallery structures.

Tim Brennan

There's an increasingly unchallenged mythology that states that the recent proliferation of the artist-curator model began with Damien Hirst. But, whilst I was at college in the mid-1980s, there was a thriving network of artist-led activity across the North of England which it felt natural to work within. As I was making time-based work it would often be appropriate to create my own opportunities outside of traditional gallery structures, so that by the time I began working beyond college I'd already had five years of experience of making and organising such public projects as a default part of my practice – and that's still with me.

My walk/works (manoeuvres) allow me to make investigations into public spaces, and to structure a time-based way of introducing my findings back into those spaces. My work is born out of contexts which would have resisted the idea of making art objects for sale from a gallery (I've offered very few works 'for sale'. I constantly review this principle but it has meant that I have chosen to develop ways of working which emphasise research and which I tailor to meet whatever financial and cultural circumstances I find myself in. I'd rather make a good project for next-to-nothing than compromise the work to match a funding criteria.

Currently an AHRB funded fellow in Sunderland, Tim Brennan did a BA (Hons) at Humberside College of Higher Education (1985-1988), was at the Slade School of Fine Art (1988-1990) and did an MA in Public History & Historiography at Ruskin College, Oxford (1996-1998).

Antony Hall

During and since my degree I have participated in a lot of group projects and exhibitions including solo shows at G39 in Cardiff and Station in Bristol. This year I exhibited in Arnolfini's touring group show 'Presentness is Grace'. An AHRB grant and a New Visual Artists' grant for 2000-2001 have provided essential financial support.

In 2000 I wheeled my tabletop piece – The pond life microscope projector – into G39. Constructed from jam-jars, pipes and old bits of machinery it looked like a pile of junk, but actually sustained a globule of pond life. G39 has been a great support in my work, it is a social hub as well as a gallery, a community where artists can meet and discuss ideas. I am hoping to get involved with a similar kind of community here in Manchester. This is happening: a group of us from the MA course are organising a show in a disused warehouse later this year and I am working on a collaborative performance to coincide with the Manchester Art Gallery opening night in May. Art isn't only about major galleries: it has to happen everywhere, but you have to create your own opportunities – collaboration has always been the healthiest way of doing this for me.

Antony Hall did a BA (Hons) Fine Art at UWIC: Cardiff School of Art and Design, (1996-1999) and is currently undertaking an MA in Art as Environment, Manchester Metropolitan University (2001-2002).

For an update on Antony Hall's career go to Artists' Profiles Index

The writers

Libby Anson is an independent professional, creative and personal development consultant, who also works as a freelance lecturer and writer.

Abigail Branagan is a freelance consultant and marketing director of the Applied Arts Agency - a retail and gallery space in Clerkenwell, London. Originally trained in fine art, she has been working in the creative sector for eight years and has undertaken projects for a range of organisations, including Mazorca Projects, London.

Mark Gubb is an artist based in Nottingham working in a range of disciplines from painting to installation to video. His installation and film commission for Grizedale Arts references classic British horror and its cross pollination with American culture. A lecturer at the University of Derby, South East Derbyshire College and a regular contributor to a-n's publications, he is also co-director of artist-led initiative Loadstar.

Wendy Mason is a designer-maker in Yorkshire who also works as an arts consultant and trainer.

Graham Parker is an artist, critic, curator and lecturer involved in artist-led initiatives in Manchester. His work has been commissioned by Henry Moore Institute and Tate Gallery, Liverpool (Artranspennine), Manchester City Art Gallery, Compton Verney, Foundation for Art and Creative Technology and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. He has shown extensively in the UK and internationally. He is Visual Arts Officer at Salford University and co-course leader of Tate Liverpool's University Network MA course module and artistic director (with Dave Beech) of floating ip project space Manchester.

Emma Safe is an artist and writer on the visual arts based in Birmingham.