Abingdon Studios

Book now for a FREE evening event as part of the We're Still Here! Project. Event hosted Showtown Blackpool

14 APRIL
6 - 8 PM.

Supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

We're Still Here! History Club - Linden Archives - April 2026 Tickets - Blackpool - OutSavvy Get ready for a fabulous evening at the very first We’re Still Here. History Club with the incredible Stuart Linden Rhodes, aka Linden Archives, on Tuesday, 14th April, presented in partnership with Showtown. A pioneer of documenting q***r Northern nightlife in the nineties, Stuart’s beautiful p...

ANNOUNCING our artists line up for this year's The Manchester Contemporary

Celebrating surpassing out 10 year milestone as a studio provision and commissioner on the Lancashire coastline. We will be sharing work for sale by artists who have been supported through solo, group, and residency commissions; as well as introducing artists due to show with us in 2026.

We are also looking to introduce visitors to our new archive publication- an artists response to the last decade of activity for Abingdon Studios (ABS). Of course they'll be a tote bag for sale to help carry the book home and begin our campaign to raise funds to continue to see Artists Being Supported for another decade👌.

Come say hi. Come support artists. We look forward to being part of it all again. With thanks for Arts Council England and our ongoing partnership working with Grundy Art Gallery c/o Blackpool Council.

UP NEXT in our Upper Floor Project Space.
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GRACE CLIFFORD
Thine is the Kingdom


*Opening
18 January
5-7pm
(Exhibition runs by appointment only thereafter until 1st Feb)
*following on from opening same 2-4pm.

Grace Clifford (b.2000, Birmingham) mainly works in sculpture and installation. She has recently been thinking about desire and suffering, chocolate, the sacred, the profane, plastic water bottles, metal, God, wheat, chicken, milk, mourning something that can’t die, horses and vitality.

Since October 2024, Clifford has undertaken a number of site visits to Blackpool accumulating material and generating ideas through intensive periods of observation and reflection.

Clifford is fascinated by rituals and reflections surrounding blue-collar trade, directly informed by her lived experiences alongside personal and shared heritages. She works intuitively and in response to the environment around her, embracing and allowing subconscious feelings to weave into physical outcomes.

She is particularly interested in the looping, cyclical nature of the work and leisure relationship in which Blackpool exists. For Thine is the Kingdom, Clifford has sought to site herself within this cycle directly, rather than observe it from a far, embracing a looping pilgrimage from the studio to Blackpool and back again.

Thine is the Kingdom takes its name from the Lord’s Prayer. A repeated doctrine intended to affirm power and righteousness. Grace has been seeking patterns and connections that hark to our collective devotion to labour and the false notion of freedom in our pursuit for pleasure.

More info: https://work-leisure.org/grace-clifford/

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Thine is the Kingdom by Grace Clifford has been commissioned by Abingdon Studios as part of the Work/Leisure_4 Residency Programme, supported by , and
Work/Leisure is Abingons’s artist residency programme established 2016.

ACCESS:
*Abingdon Studios, 14 Abingdon St, Following the opening event, the exhibition is by prior appointment. Please contact Work Leisure and/or Abingdon Studios for access and details.

GRACE CLIFFORD (2024) Thine is the Kingdom / 18 January 2024 / ABINGDON STUDIOS PROJECT SPACE Grace Clifford (b.2000, Birmingham) mainly works in sculpture and installation. She has recently been thinking about desire a…

Abingdon Studios (ABS) is returning to this years The Manchester Contemporary with a selection of studio artists, and associate artists from the region.

Find us at STAND 228.

Artists take 70% of any sales made. The 30% to ABS helps us on our next ten year plan to continue to support and develop artists.

Huge thanks to our participating artists:
Ann Carragher
Kris Canavan
Tina Dempsey
Joseph Doubtfire
Garth Gratrix
Abigail Hampsey
Tom Ireland
Stuart Linden Rhodes

Thanks to the continued support and partnership working with Grundy Art Gallery and project grant funds from Arts Council England .

We cordially invite you to our next solo commission…

Kris Canavan
Feat. Stuart Brisley
01 Nov – 20 Nov
(coinciding with Blackpool Film Festival 01 – 03 Nov)
Blackpool Film Festival

Preview Friday 01 Nov, 5-7 pm.
All welcome

In The Shadow Of… an exhibition by performance artist Kris Canavan

Commissioned by Abingdon Studios; supported by Aunty Social and Blackpool Film Festival.

This exhibition explores the body as both site and subject through film archive, photography, and mixed media, drawing on Canavan’s visceral performance work and its self-expressive, experimental and profound social and political implications.

Kris Canavan’s work pushes these themes to their rawest extremes. With performances that straddle pain, endurance, and vulnerability, Canavan exposes the body’s limits and its potential as a site for q***r resistance and transformation. Their interventions engage with both personal and political struggle, echoing the works of other groundbreaking artists in the canon of performance art.

This exhibition features a significant loan from the artist Stuart Brisley, a seminal figure in British performance art. Brisley’s Arbeit Macht Frei (1972) is a powerful meditation on labour, violence, and the body as a site of protest. Like Canavan’s practice, Brisley’s work explores themes of endurance, suffering, and the politics of survival. loan courtesy of The Artist and LUX, London.

Abingdon Studios programme 2024/25 is supported by Arts Council England celebrating 10 years of flagship artist studio, workspace and project space provision in Blackpool.


https://abingdonstudios.org.uk/kris-canavan-feat-stuart-brisley/

Please note: Abingdon Studios Project Space is accessible via stairs only.

Abingdon Studios, member and artist, , working with LeftCoast on Saturday in Abingdon Street Market (below us) as part of the Art Road Trip tour with National Gallery.
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