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Future Foresting // Residency Update 01

The body is embodied landscape.

I’m pleased to begin sharing my two-month residency at Wigwell Lodge, Derbyshire, supported by Void Art Centre and The Ampersand Foundation.

This residency continues as part of an intensive 100-day period of fieldwork across Derry–Londonderry, where walking, carrying, clay foraging, and making became both artistic practice and research. Now here in Derbyshire, the pace shifts. The residency offers space to pause, reflect, and turn my attention inwards; towards a landscape of renewed relationships with bone, the pelvis, the spine, as coordinates to deep time. It is a moment to filter a rich matrix of multidisciplinary research into new forms of writing, sculpture, photography, film, and installation over the coming year.

My practice asks a simple question: What if we replanted the forest back into our bones?

Working across ceramics, ecosomatic practice, movement ecology, and speculative bioarchaeology, I explore how clay, bone, and landscape each record the forces that shape them. Increasingly, my research centres on movement ecology; how everyday actions such as walking, carrying, and squatting reveal forgotten relationships between human embodiment, place, and the more-than-human world.

This residency continues conversations first developed with the last director, Viviana Checchia, at VOID around social permaculture, collective care, and ecological ways of thinking. These ideas have profoundly shaped my practice, where sculpture becomes less about producing objects and more about creating situations that invite participation, embodied attention, and new ways of sensing our relationships with each other and the living world. It is now perfect timing for several reasons, to lessen the grip on my research gathered so far now as I move into integrating, metabolising and processing all the information so far. Actually finding that I have evolved aspects of the principles in permaculture, repositioning my values from within the practice itself. Principles that are in focus right now: ‘use the edges and value the marginal’ and apply self-regulation and accept feedback’.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be sharing the physical experiments, field observations, and evolving ideas that are shaping ‘Future Foresting // BioAr(t)chae(c)ologies’. Through the Mesolithic landscape of Mountsandel, to ecosomatic practice, and material experimentation, I’m developing sculptural guides that are intentionally minimal, playful, and quietly unsettled, inviting us to experience movement as a form of ecological knowledge.

How might changing the way we move change the way we care; for ourselves, for one another, and for the environments we inhabit?

#FutureForesting #EcoSensing #MovementEcology #Residency #VOIDArtCentre #AmpersandFoundation #Ceramics #SocialPermaculture #Bioart #ContemporaryCeramics

Volunteer at Void

As a charity Void Art Centre relies on our wonderful team of volunteers to help keep everything running smoothly. We currently have openings for Front-of-House volunteers during the course of our upcoming show Animale by Hanna Tuulikki. Animale opens on Saturday 4th July 2026, and runs until 5th September 2026.

Main responsibilities of a Volunteer Invigilator include:

• Monitoring artworks on display
• Greeting visitors and providing any necessary handouts
• Answering general questions about the exhibition
• Reporting any issues to staff
• Ensuring the safety and security of the gallery space
• Creating a positive and welcoming experience for all visitors

If you have a few hours a week (or more) to spare and would like to join the Void volunteer team for a few months, we would love to hear from you. Register your interest by emailing shakira@derryvoid.com.

Our opening hours are Tuesday–Saturday, 11am–5pm.

Animale, a solo exhibition by Hanna Tuulikki

Launching Saturday 4 July 2026, 6-8pm at Void Art Centre

The team at Void Art Centre invite you to the launch of ‘Animale’, a solo exhibition by British-Finnish artist and composer Hanna Tuulikki that brings together new and existing film and sound works to explore how gendered identities are shaped through entanglements between humans and the more-than-human world.

The launch will take place on Saturday 4 July 2026, from 6-8pm at Void Art Centre. Refreshments will be provided, and we welcome BYOB!

Across works Deer Dancer (2019), cloud-cuckoo-island (2016) and Seahorse (2026), Hanna uses vocal performance, costume and cinematic embodiment to reimagine masculinity as a performed and mutable condition, reframed through animal behaviour, myth and ecological relation. Moving between ritual, lament and testimony, the works trace cycles of violence, trauma, care and interdependence, positioning voice, gesture and multispecies communication as sites through which alternative, more attentive ways of being might be rehearsed.

About the artist

Hanna Tuulikki is an award-winning British-Finnish artist, composer, and performer based in Scotland. Her work explores our connection with the more-than-human world. Practising across sound art, music, visual art, and live art, she blends sonic composition with ritual forms and visual elements – including costume, choreography, and graphic scores – to tell ‘stories of re-worlding’ through immersive installation, moving image, and live performance.

At the heart of her practice, Hanna works with the voice, using singing and extended vocalisation to explore how the body communicates beyond language. Her sonic compositions weave vocal textures – both composed and improvised – with field recordings and electronics. Often site-specific, her work engages directly with place, activating natural acoustics and adopting processes of experimental translation to create hybrid ‘human-and-more-than-human’ soundscapes. Her work with choreography, costume, and visual scores expands this inquiry, examining how movement and image can embody a kinaesthetic form of listening, while her drawn notations map relationships between voices, bodies, and landscapes, deepening our sensory connection to place and ecology.

Void Art Centre are hiring for the position of Interim Director.

Void Art Centre (Void) is an arts organisation and active civic contributor, creating
meaningful connections between art & society, working within Derry and Northern
Ireland to reflect the global changes we are all part of.

Void’s ambition is to ensure our programmes and the organisation as a whole are
sustainable and community-engaged, entailing attention and care towards the team,
our resources and local communities and our environment. Responding to this
ambition, Void focuses on alternative ways of producing, distributing and presenting
art projects which respond to our locality even as we present international-level work.

The Interim Director is responsible for the overall management of the Void Art Centre
and its general programme for the duration of his/her appointment. In conjunction
with the team, he/she will be involved in organisational planning such that activities
which have been committed to are undertaken and that financial management,
people management, and programming decisions are made to satisfy the
requirements of funders and the organisation’s overall mission. This may also
include planning for activities which fall beyond the term of the interim role.

This is an opportunity for someone with strong leadership and team-building
experience, as well as an understanding of the visual arts sector, to gain experience
leading the organisation and its programmes on an interim basis.

For a full job description, please visit our website HERE.

THE DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS HAS NOW PASSED.

This June–July, Gail Mahon joins Void Art Centre × The Ampersand Foundation as Artist-in-Residence in Derbyshire, near the Peak District, developing Future Foresting: EcoSensing Bioar(t)chae(c)ologies. During the residency, she will expand on her creative autoethnographic study to explore human–forest relations by mapping interconnections to walking, clay, soils, and bone minerals, creating somatic sculptures and experimental, movement-based artefacts.

Gail will extend her research from Irish Mesolithic sites at Mount Sandel in Northern Ireland to British sites at York, including Star Carr, and engage with interdisciplinary arts and health sciences at Loughborough University, weaving together fieldwork, creative reflection, and embodied practice. The residency also provides time to connect deeply with the Peak District landscape, forming elements of research assembled as part somatic poetry, part critical essay, and part call to action; allowing her work to evolve organically through movement, material inquiry, and forest immersion.

Gail Mahon is an ecosomatic artist and practice-based PhD researcher at Ulster University, based near Derry City, working across ceramics, movement, and biological arts. Her practice positions the body as a responsive ecological site, exploring plasticity and porosity through interactions with bone mineralogy, clay, and environmental systems as interrelated material-culture languages.

Through installation, image-making, and socially engaged processes, Mahon investigates the entanglement of climate, landscape, and embodied experience. Her work unfolds through collaborative and site-responsive methodologies, including immersive workshops that prioritise proprioceptive readings of landscape as modes of trust, risk, care, and sensory exchange.

Mahon is a recipient of the Northern Bridge Doctoral Scholarship (AHRC), supporting transdisciplinary research that brings together bioengineering, bioarchaeology, and sports science in collaboration with partners at Durham University. She holds an MA in Ceramics & Glass from the Royal College of Art and has exhibited across the UK, Ireland, and internationally, including Italy and China.

She is the founder of The Clay Gymnasium (TCG), an evolving social studio-lab that integrates movement culture, material practice, and ecological health. Her work traces shifting relationships among embodiment, matter, and the environment, situating transformation as both an intimate and a planetary condition.

As a charity, Void Art Centre relies on our wonderful team of volunteers to help keep everything running smoothly. Our volunteer programme seeks to enhance local people’s relationships to the art centre, recognising the importance of community involvement. 

For our upcoming show Re-turning we have Front-of-House volunteer slots available from 28th April to 30th May.

People choose to volunteer for different reasons. These include:
To contribute to an existing skill set and/or gain new skills
To play a part in an established art space 
To have an exciting role and unique experience in a contemporary art environment
To enhance employability and your CV
To learn more about the art world and contribute to the local community

Volunteering can support:
Connection: including enhancing relationships between individuals and fostering shared interests for society’s betterment
Localism: including opportunities to participate in, and have input into, local services and decision-making processes
Community involvement: including contributing to active communities through engagement and partnership
Wellbeing: reducing social isolation
Employability

Purpose of the role: 

To welcome visitors into the gallery, supply them with information about the current exhibition and ensure the safety of the works on display.

What you will do: Check the works on display whilst on duty; Keep a tally of how many visitors enter throughout your shift; Keep the foyer and gallery space tidy and free of any hazards; Encourage visitors to sign the guestbook; Promote book sales

Skills, experience and qualities needed: Ability to be friendly and comfortable talking to members of the public; Ability to take initiative ; Have an interest in contemporary art 

When? Any day or length of time combination that suits your needs. We are open Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm

What you could get out of it: An expanded knowledge of established artists exhibiting at Void; Gain valuable experience in the cultural sector  ; Meeting new, like-minded people; Socialisation; Our ‘Arts Opportunity’ resource sheet.

If you have a few hours a week (or more) to spare and would like to join the Void volunteer team for a few months, we would love to hear from you. Please register your interest by emailing shakira@derryvoid.com.

We’re excited to share that we have begun a two-year partnership with The Alternative Art School (TAAS), supporting ten artists local to Derry through a year-long fellowship within our global community. TAAS is a global online art school, in dialogue with visionary artists, curators and an international artist community. The partnership reflects a shared commitment between our organisations – to ensure that artists have sustained access to critical exchange and conversations that help a practice stay alive and evolve over time.

Over the coming year, selected fellows will participate alongside the broader TAAS membership – joining visiting artist talks, crit clubs, workshops and informal exchanges that span disciplines, geographies and ways of working.

The fellows are: Paola Bernardelli, Finbar Kelly, Sue Morris, Gwen Stevenson, Serena Rodgers, Niall McLaughlin, Ainé Hill, Cara Gilliland, Fionulla Quinn and Matthew Wilson.

Thank you to The Alternative Art School for facilitating and supporting this partnership – we’re looking forward to the coming year!

Void Art Centre are hiring 👋 Via Job Start, we are hiring a Digital and Engagement Assistant who will be responsible for supporting the online digital and real life engagement of Void Art Centre Users. At Void we engage diverse users with our programme of exhibitions, new artist commissions, talks, educational activities, events, collaborations and more. The Digital and Engagement Assistant will assist the Void team in all these areas. See job responsibilities and both essential and desired skills below:

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES

• Liaise with and support the Civic Engagement Curator, attending and assisting Programme events and activities happening at Void, as well as around Derry.
• Work with the Curator of Civic Engagement to attend meetings with relevant stakeholders across the city and wider sector, establishing new relationships and maintaining long term ones. 
• Act as first point of contact to the general communications email inbox, responding to all enquiries related to communications and social media.
• Update Void’s website webpages for events, activities, and press materials, ensuring that webpages are approved by relevant partners.
• Keep up-to-date with Social Media posts and administration such as answering queries.
• Organise the online logistics for events, such as creating booking forms and completing associated paperwork, such as risk assessments, permission forms etc.
• Collaborate with all team members to schedule, produce and distribute monthly newsletters, currently using Mailchimp, plus design and produce dedicated e-newsletters for new events.
• Contribute to the development of users’ engagement, supporting the distribution of audience surveys
• Support the organisation with collating data that forms part of our quarterly funding reports.
• Meet colleagues regularly to keep the calendar up-to-date and prepare social media and website posts for the full range of Void’s activities.
• Maintain a personal clean and tidy office space, and assist with general cleaning throughout the Art Centre.
• Cover Front-of-House responsibilities as necessary.

ESSENTIAL SKILLS

• Confident and an excellent communicator, verbally and in writing to a variety of audiences 
• Computer literate in Photoshop, Word and Excel software, as well as proficient in using online Social Media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook.
• Administrative and time management skills.
• Ability to work as part of a team as well as independently, and have experience of liaising with people at all levels.
• Be comfortable acting as a key holder and possess the ability to open and close Void as needed.
• Be available to work Saturdays twice during each show and occasional evenings to cover events.

DESIRABLE SKILLS

• Demonstrable knowledge of and passion for contemporary art, and the work of Void Art Centre.
• An interest in written communication, and the various ways of engaging an audience.
• Experience working with InDesign and Mailchimp.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Standard Hours: 15-25 hours per week (Flexible/Reduced Hours potentially available through liaison with Void Art Centre or your work coach). The salary is dependent on age (ages 16-17 £7.55 per hour, 18-20 £10.00 per hour, 21 plus £12.21 per hour.)

To apply, please send a CV and Cover Letter to shakira@derryvoid.com with the subject line ‘Digital and Engagement Assistant’ by Friday 20 February 2026, 11.59pm.

Jobstart is open to working age benefit claimants who are deemed eligible by a work coach. If you are on Universal Credit, please contact your Work Coach via your Journal. If you are in receipt of any other working age benefit, please contact your local Jobs & Benefits Office on 0800 001 5782.

Photo: The Void Art team (minus Shakira!) during training with Dorian Braun, pictured. By Shakira Nelis, 2025

In September 2025, we launched Emily McFarland’s solo exhibition, Pollanroe Burn, an exhibition that unfolds through a series of new films and archival fragments, forming part of Emily’s ongoing long-term research into the shifting ecology of the Sperrin Mountains of West Tyrone, in the North of Ireland, in the shadow of proposed major industrial-scale gold extraction. As part of the exhibition, Emily has put together a reading list that details key readings across her research, spanning Irish folklore, watery thoughts and ecological studies. See a list of readings below, many of which are also available to read at Void Art Centre until Saturday 13 December 2025:

• Fieldwork for future ecologies: radical practice for art and art-based research, by Crone, B., Nightingale, S. and Stanton, P
• 3 Stories from the Mid-Tyrone Gaeltacht: three stories from Professor Éamonn Ó Tuathail’s Collection of Folklore in Irish, with a revised edition, Ó Tuathail, É. (collected in) Mac Gabhann, P
• Room for the river: The Foyle river catchment landscape: connecting people, place and nature, by Campbell, L.
• Irish Rivers, de Buitléar, É.
• Amazon in flux: territory, tensions and labour, by Stefano, D., Garvey, B. & Virginio, F.
• Thinking with Water, by Chen, C., MacLeod, J. & Neimanis, A.
• The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives, by Gómez-Barris, M.
• The Omagh Gold Mine: A Report on the Controversy, by Moore, N.

As a charity, Void Art Centre relies on our wonderful team of volunteers to help keep everything running smoothly. We are always open to enquiries about our Front-of-House volunteer roles, however from January to April we also have opportunities for Volunteer Invigilators for the upcoming exhibition Barbara Steveni I Find Myself, opening Saturday, 17th January 2026 and running until 4th April 2026

Main responsibilities of a Volunteer Invigilator include:

• Monitoring artworks on display
• Greeting visitors and providing any necessary handouts
• Answering general questions about the exhibition
• Reporting any issues to staff
• Ensuring the safety and security of the gallery space
• Creating a positive and welcoming experience for all visitors

If you have a few hours a week (or more) to spare and would like to join the Void volunteer team, we would love to hear from you. Register your interest by emailing shakira@derryvoid.com.

Our opening hours are Tuesday–Saturday, 11am–5pm.

Read more about Barbara Steveni, I Find Myself show here.

Image: Barbara Steveni’s Home. Photography by Jean-Philippe Woodland. Courtesy Estate of Barbara Steveni.