Emerging Contemporaries: Creating Space for Yorkshire's Emerging Artists (part one)

By Amelia Pethullis

This summer, the underground Vaults beneath Scarborough’s Market Hall became home to an exciting celebration of contemporary Yorkshire art.

Emerging Contemporaries brought together thirteen artists from across the region for a group exhibition spanning painting, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, textile work, installation and mixed media practices. Running from 14 August to 2 September, the exhibition transformed a vacant Vault unit into a vibrant showcase of emerging creative voices and demonstrated the breadth of talent developing across Yorkshire today.

What united the exhibition was not a single theme, but a shared spirit of exploration. Across the works on display, artists reflected on landscape, memory, folklore, identity, disability, the natural world, mythology and personal experience. Together they created an exhibition that celebrated the rich diversity of contemporary artistic practice in the North.

My Journey into Curating

Emerging Contemporaries also marked a significant personal milestone for me. I first joined the Scott Creative Arts Foundation (SCAF) as an intern in 2024 and have continued working with the organisation as a freelance creative ever since. While my role encompasses a range of projects, I primarily lead on social media, communications and marketing activity.

Alongside my work with SCAF, I work with Converge at York St John University, facilitating art sessions for adults with lived experience of mental health conditions. Community engagement and creating accessible opportunities through the arts have become central motivations throughout my professional practice.

Earlier this year, I completed my Master of Fine Art which came immediately after my undergraduate studies. Like many artists approaching graduation, I found myself asking an important question: what happens next?

Rather than waiting for opportunities to emerge, I wanted to create one. Supported by SCAF, Emerging Contemporaries became my first curatorial project. It was an opportunity to bring together artists at different stages of their creative journeys and to build connections between practitioners working across Yorkshire. More than anything, I wanted to create a platform that celebrated the incredible work already happening across the region. With inspiration from our annual Emerging Artist Award at SCAF, and my recent summer Degree Show at York St John, I set out planning.

The result was an exhibition full of bold, eclectic and experimental work which sparked new conversations and connections. It was equally rewarding to see artists meeting one another, sharing experiences and developing new relationships as it was to see audiences engaging with the work itself.

Meet the Artists

Rebecca Carr

At a Glance

Practice: Painting and installation

Themes: Landscape, still life, colour, perspective and wonder

Based in: North Yorkshire

Rebecca Carr's work explores the relationship between indoor and outdoor spaces through expressive painting. Drawing inspiration from both landscape and still life, she creates colourful works that invite viewers to reconnect with a sense of curiosity and discovery.

Artist Insights

At the heart of Rebecca's practice is a memory many of us share: drawing a line across the page as children to show where the sky met the land.

As she explains:

"I still hold that youthful moment of realisation that the sky meets the land as I paint. Wonder and understanding through the love of art is what I most enjoy bringing into my creative practice."

Her paintings seek to retain that sense of wonder whilst creating works intended to live comfortably within domestic spaces. Whether producing intimate works for shelves and corners or larger pieces that anchor a room, Rebecca carefully considers how paintings influence the environments they occupy.

For Rebecca, Emerging Contemporaries offered a chance to connect with new audiences across Yorkshire:

"Although I have been working as an artist for a while, I am still emerging in new areas and this provided me with the opportunity to take my work to new areas of Yorkshire."

Charlotte-Grace Watson

At a Glance

Practice: Contemporary painting

Themes: Landscape, memory, atmosphere and light

Studio: York Fabrication Studios

Charlie's paintings occupy a space between observation and memory. Working primarily with acrylic paint, she creates landscapes that feel simultaneously familiar and imagined.

Artist Insights

Rather than documenting specific locations, Charlie is interested in capturing emotional responses to place.

Her paintings Electric Sky and First Light exemplify this approach.

Electric Sky explores the meeting point between sea and sky through rich blues, turquoise tones and a luminous pink horizon. The work evokes the intensity of changing light while balancing movement and stillness.

Meanwhile, First Light captures the energy of the sea as morning emerges across the horizon. Layered brushwork preserves the movement of water while softer colour transitions introduce a sense of optimism and calm.

Whether working on large canvases or smaller studies, Charlie's practice encourages viewers to pause and reconnect with both nature and their own memories of place.

Julie Kelly

At a Glance

Instagram : @julie.kelly.artist

Practice: Mixed media

Themes: Coastline, seaweed, memory and environmental observation

Based in: Filey

Having returned to Yorkshire following a career in the NHS, Julie Kelly's artistic practice is deeply informed by daily walks along the coast.

Artist Insights

Walking along Filey's shoreline, often whilst litter picking, Julie became fascinated by the seaweed tangled amongst debris washed up along the wrack line.

Those discoveries now form the basis of her artistic process.

Dried and pressed seaweed is integrated into abstract watercolours before being enhanced through delicate hand embroidery. Each work captures the textures, colours and rhythms of the Yorkshire coastline while also reflecting on environmental impact and human interaction with natural spaces.

Julie describes art as a continuation of a family legacy. Following the loss of her mother, she inherited her art materials and has incorporated them into her own practice, creating a meaningful connection between generations.

The confidence gained through Emerging Contemporaries has already led to further opportunities, including selection for the Beverley Art Gallery Open Call.

"It was a privilege to be amongst a fantastic group of emerging artists and has given me confidence to continue and develop my portfolio."

Matt Hammond

At a Glance

Instagram : @matthammond_art

Practice: Sculpture

Themes: Perception, inversion, identity and material experimentation

Matt Hammond's sculptural practice seeks to challenge expectations and disrupt familiar ways of seeing.

Artist Insights

Working primarily with repurposed and recycled materials, Matt constructs fragmented elements of the human figure before re-presenting them through unconventional forms.

Central to his practice is the concept of inversion.

By overturning assumptions about figurative sculpture, he creates works that shift between recognition and uncertainty. What might initially appear familiar quickly becomes more subjective, encouraging viewers to question their own interpretations.

As Matt explains:

"The work transcends expectations of figurative sculpture and confronts the viewer in a way that poses the question: 'What am I to you?'"

For him, sculpture is not simply about material exploration but about reshaping perceptions of time, selfhood and physicality.

Rosalind Newby

At a Glance

Instagram : @rosalindnewby

Practice: Multidisciplinary sculpture and installation

Themes: Mythology, responsibility, community and environmental reflection

Rosalind Newby's practice explores the relationship between freedom and responsibility across personal, social and environmental contexts.

Artist Insights

Rosalind describes her studio as a "sandbox"; a place of experimentation in which ordinary materials can be transformed into something extraordinary.

Her contribution to Emerging Contemporaries, Neptune and Salacia, drew heavily on themes from Homer's Odyssey, particularly the contrast between Penelope's quiet resilience and Odysseus' destructive pursuit of glory. The work draws upon Penelope's strategies of sustaining and maintaining against Odysseus' ultimately futile quest, using mythology as a lens through which to consider contemporary relationships with responsibility, community and the environment.

Constructed from found domestic objects including pan stands, lamp stands and bottle racks, the figures invited viewers to consider human hubris and our relationship with the natural world.

Installed within the underground Market Hall Vaults, the works felt perfectly at home amongst the atmospheric architecture.

Rosalind was particularly drawn to the exhibition at a pivotal moment in her own artistic development:

"I wanted this opportunity to situate myself as an artist within this community where I now have a home, and meet artists from elsewhere."

Kate Brown

At a Glance

Instagram : @kate.brown.art

Practice: Interdisciplinary

Themes: Transformation, memory, agency and natural processes

Kate Brown's work brings together painting, drawing, installation, performance and material research.

Artist Insights

Questions of transformation sit at the centre of Kate's practice.

Originally emerging through investigations into botanical materials and experiences of loss, her research has expanded into broader enquiries around memory, change and authorship.

Mapping, archival methodologies and, more recently, rhizomatic diagrams form an important part of Kate's research process, helping her make visible the connections, repetitions and traces that emerge through making.

Recent projects explore collaborations with living materials, including plants and mycelium, questioning traditional ideas about artistic control and creative ownership.

Rather than imposing a fixed outcome upon materials, Kate invites natural processes to become active participants within the work.

She explains:

"I am interested in what emerges when control is relinquished, when time is allowed to shape meaning, and when making becomes a process of enquiry rather than a pursuit of resolution."

For Kate, Emerging Contemporaries offered valuable visibility and audience engagement whilst contributing to a growing network of artists working throughout Yorkshire.

Lee Oakley

At a Glance

Instagram : @oakleeart

Practice: Performance and writing

Themes: Disability, queerness, embodiment and resistance

Lee Oakley's work examines the pressures society places upon bodies to perform, produce and remain visible.

Artist Insights

Drawing from disability studies, performance theory and lived experience, Lee's practice resists conventional expectations around productivity, visibility and presence.

Their work explores the pressures society places on bodies to perform clearly, efficiently and in real time, questioning what happens when those expectations cannot or should not be met. Through both performance and writing, Lee creates space for alternative ways of understanding embodiment, identity and resistance.

While earlier works centred on the body itself, recent projects have increasingly turned towards writing as a means of exploring lived experience through language, landscape and memory. Coastal imagery frequently appears within their work, reflecting both personal connections to Scarborough and broader concerns around belonging, movement and self-understanding.

After five years studying Fine Art through both BA and MFA programmes, Emerging Contemporaries provided an opportunity to exhibit outside York for the first time and consider how their work might exist beyond traditional gallery settings.