Artist Biographies

Sarah Farmer is a multimedia artist and musician based in the West Midlands whose work is largely rooted in sound.  Farmer’s work often explores how information can be encoded in objects and spaces, how it can be decoded through artistic/musical/sound making practises and how knowledge is shared and communicated. A primarily ‘live’ artist, Farmer is also interested in the roles of performance and documentation of works, the space between these two modes and the meanings and implications of documenting liveness or performing documents.

Adele Mary Reed is an artist and facilitator of Mothers Who Make Coventry. She has been experimenting with photographic imagery for over fifteen years. She has exhibited at Class Room Gallery and the Herbert Museum & Art Gallery in Coventry, as well as in London, Birmingham and Volgograd, besides undertaking commissions from Coventry City Council and Coventry Artspace Partnerships. Her work centres around the sensory perceptions of the everyday. She is interested in autobiographical archiving, plant-life, and in capturing the different receptions of natural spaces. See more at https://motherswhomake.org/coventry.

Rhiannon Bigham is an interdisciplinary artist based in Coventry, exploring a range of themes and media, each linked. Work explores the built environment, new town planning and community, logo design, recreating technical diagrams as art pieces, emotive illustration, narrated photography and sound structures. More info at https://www.visualsequence.co.uk/

Jitey Samra is an oral historian, curator and activist with a background as a NHS practitioner in mental health. Jitey compiled the book ‘Coming to Coventry’, accompanied by a touring exhibition, based on oral and material histories with South Asian people who migrated to Coventry in the pre, inter and post-war periods. She has worked closely with The Herbert art gallery and other museums, including the V&A for their Maharaja Ranjit Singh exhibition. She participated in the BBC4 programme ‘Everything is Connected’ on George Eliot's Life, and has received several awards, including from the Asian Fire Service, Godiva Trust, Coventry Voluntary Action and Coventry & Warwickshire NHS Partnership Trust, for active contributions to communities. Born and brought up in Coventry, Jitey has a passionate interest in documenting the diverse South Asian histories of the city for future generations, through life stories, before earlier generations and their memories are lost to time.

Tarla Patel is a Contemporary visual artist based in Coventry, and graduated with a MA in Contemporary Arts, from Coventry University, in 2019: https://tarlapatel.myportfolio.com/ Tarla’s work explores identities, memory and space through migration and storytelling, with the use of experimental analogue film and digital mediums and she has exhibited work in the UK. Patel is the legacy holder of her father’s photography the Masterji Archive, which was part of the successful Coventry City of Culture launch, collaborating on exhibitions in the UK, Mumbai and New York. The photographs document migrants especially from the South Asian community, in post war Coventry from the 1950s to year 2000. In 2017 Tarla Patel worked with her father Maganbhai Patel to compile and publish the Masterji book which was published in the same year with a local Coventry group: https://masterji.photography

Iain Emsley is an artist and academic who works at the intersection of computational methods and understanding culture through sonification.

Laura Nyahuye was born and raised in Zimbabwe, She is a resident of Coventry, a mother, a multi-disciplinary artist, curator, designer/maker, writer, storyteller, performer, changemaker and advocate. Her artistic practice is heavily influenced by her African heritage and migrant experience. Laura is the founder and CEO of Maokwo. Maokwo works with minoritized humans. Lived experiences of refugees, asylum seekers, and artists from migrant backgrounds are at the heart of what they creatively advocate and respond to. They amplify women, young people, sanctuary seekers, and artists' voices. They consult and tackle issues to do with inclusion, representation in the arts and communities.