Speakers

Garth Gratrix is an artist, independent curator and founder director of Abingdon Studios and Project Space (ABS)- celebrating its tenth year as a flagship studio provision in Blackpool and on the Lancashire Coastline. They create sculptural installations that formally frolic between materials, language and space. As a collaborator, they develop and commission opportunities for intergenerational and interdisciplinary artists- in particular those whose work speaks to nuanced queer lived experience, class, pleasure, rest and play.

Recent commissions include solo shows Flamboyant Flamingos feat. Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Derek Jarman, Grundy Art Gallery, 2024; Cheeky Felicia, Scarborough Museums & Galleries, 2023; and How do you make a Queer Ritual, Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster, in collaboration with Jez Dolan. 

As curator, they recently delivered Wink Wink- a major expose of 26 living LGBTQIA+ artists across the UK, exhibited at Whitaker Museum & Art Gallery, Lancashire. including artists such as Harold Offeh, Helen Cammock, Ro Robertson, Jonathan Baldock, Sunil Gupta and Lothar Gotz. Since 2019 they have been curator for UK New Artist of the Year £10k Award with UK New Artists Ltd, Robert Walters Group PLC and Saatchi Gallery. Winners include Conor Rogers, Catriona Robertson, Habib Hajalie, Anne von Freyburg and Tyreis Holder. 

They were the recipient of the Clore Visual Art Fellowship in 2023 and previously PIVOT development programme with Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, and The Bluecoat, Liverpool in 2022.

Gratrix is currently undergoing a period of AHRC Funded Research into queer artists and supportive infrastructure in coastal towns and cities.