Abingdon Studios

03/04/2026

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.

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...

11/11/2025

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.

16/01/2025

UP NEXT in our Upper Floor Project Space.
🥁 🥁 🥁
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.

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…