School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies

02/09/2026

Join us from 5pm on Thursday 3 September for the opening night of Fly on the Wall – this year's MA Fine Art Degree Show at the University of Leeds

*RSVP via email at [email protected]*

Fly on the Wall is a varied and expansive MA degree show exhibition spanning painting, installation, ceramic sculpture and film.

The work reflects the individuality of ten artists, their different concerns and their dedication to maintaining a creative practice during a time of uncertainty within the creative sector.

*Featured artists*

AJ Turner
Bethany Wilson
Bex Blayney
Danni Yao
Mengyuan Wang
Molly Flavell
Molly Newham
Rebecca O’Hooley
Seohee Lee
Yixin Hu

The title of the show reflects how the artists want visitors to engage with the work, while also mirroring their approach to curating the exhibition:

"We want audiences to feel as though they are being given a peek behind closed doors into the artists’ studios and creative practices. The exhibition creates a space to observe, evaluate and take stock of the different creative voices emerging from an academic institution in 2026."

🥂 Private view: 3 September, 5-8pm

📅 Show open to the public 4 -8 September, 10am-4pm

📍 School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies
University Road
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 JT

*More info*

Full details about the show & artists taking part:

https://flyonthewall.leeds.ac.uk/

📷 Seohee Lee

31/07/2026

27/07/2026

Applications now open for the Yorkshire Graduate Award 2026.

The award offers one graduating BA or MA artist from a Yorkshire-based university the opportunity to undertake a fully supported residency of up to two weeks at YSP between autumn 2026 and spring 2027. The residency includes a £750 fee, materials budget, on-site accommodation, travel, meals, curatorial and technical support, and the chance to share work with the public.

The award is open to graduates from all artistic disciplines completing their studies at a Yorkshire university in 2026. Deadline to apply is Sun 23rd Aug.

Find out more at https://ysp.org.uk/jobs/yorkshire-graduate-award-2026

George Moody, ALL ROOTS LEAD TO YOU, 2025 📷 Paolina Hurry

27/07/2026

The song "represents different perspectives" about the controversial pub crawl, according to the project’s lead artist.

📸: Anna Reed
Find out more: https://bbc.in/4wV5pLA

22/07/2026

'Why we're using the power of song to take on the Otley Run with a surprise choir performance'

21/07/2026

*News – Alumna Dr Louise Atkinson commissioned to create new artwork for a major exhibition celebrating designer William Morris*

A newly commissioned artwork by artist-researcher and fine art Leeds Alumni Dr Louise Atkinson is on display in a new exhibition at Watts Gallery in Compton, Surrey.

Open until 10 January 2027, The Art of Wallpaper: Morris & Co. is an opportunity to see more than 30 original 19th century samples of iconic wallpaper designed by William Morris (1834-1896) and his circle that revolutionised interior design.

The exhibition reveals the stories behind the wallpaper patterns, from intricate studies of flora and fauna to the hand-printing techniques that defined the Arts and Crafts ethos.

Alongside these historic works, the exhibition also features two newly commissioned works – a wallpaper design by Louise Atkinson and a film by artist Freddie Yauner.

Louise Atkinson’s commissioned design – Heterotopia – explores Arts and Crafts conceptions of utopia through the intertwined yet distinct practices of May Morris and Mary Watts.

Drawing on Morris’s socialist belief in dignified labour and everyday beauty, and Watts’s spiritually infused Symbolism, the work considers how female Victorian artists and designers imagined a better world. Louise said:

“My wallpaper design emerged from research into the Arcadia wallpaper by May Morris and the tree of life motif found in Mary Watts’ designs for the Watts Mortuary Chapel, which opened in 1898.

“In developing Heterotopia, I wanted to emphasise their ideas and visual languages, exploring how their commitment to creating a more equitable world was enacted through their work.

“Although inspired by 19th-century design, the work is made using digital processes, connecting historical approaches to contemporary methods of making and reproduction.”

Find out more in this news story:

https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/fine-art/news/article/3117/alumna-dr-louise-atkinson-commissioned-to-create-new-artwork-for-a-major-exhibition-celebrating-designer-william-morris

📷 Louise Atkinson, Heterotopia, 2026. Image courtesy of the artist.

20/07/2026

* Art history alumna Dr Fiona Sit embarks on a second major fellowship to research migrant artists in 17th century Rome *

Visiting Research Fellow and Leeds Alumni Dr Fiona Sit was recently awarded a Paul Mellon Fellowship to develop her research.

This is the second major fellowship Fiona has received in connection with her work on seventeenth-century Rome, having been awarded the Rome Award for a research residency at the British School at Rome, the BSR last year.

Fiona’s new project – Migrant Artists and the Shaping of the Refugees’ Grand Tour in Protestant Britain – explores encounters between British elite tourists & migrant artists in Rome.

Dr Fiona Sit graduated with an art history masters at the University of Leeds in 2018 where she also completed a PhD. Following a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute (LAHRI), she is now a Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies.

The Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art supports early-career researchers undertaking innovative projects in British art, architecture and visual culture over a six-month period. Fiona said of her Fellowship:

“My research examines the works of migrant sculptors fleeing from Naples to Rome after the Neapolitan Revolt of 1647 against Spanish colonisation.

“It centres on how refugees’ identities and the relationships between artists, patrons of the viceregal court and the Neapolitan people evolved in the 17th century.

“Over the course of my Paul Mellon Fellowship, I will carry out research into how identities were formed and understood across a range of displaced groups, from elite travellers to migrant workers and refugees.

“The project involves archival research on the Venerable English College in Rome, as well as an examination of how materials & natural resources contributed to shaping the identities of marginalised figures.

"I am excited to build on the research I began during my time at the British School at Rome and explore these questions on a broader scale through the Paul Mellon Fellowship.

“I hope to shed new light on how movement & cultural exchange shaped identities in the past – and why these histories still matter today.”

Read the full news story on our school website:

https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/fine-art/news/article/3109/art-history-alumna-dr-fiona-sit-embarks-on-a-second-major-fellowship-to-research-migrant-artists-in-17th-century-rome

📷 Via Gulia, Rome. Photo by Fiona Sit.

11/06/2026

This year’s BA Fine Art Degree Show 2026 – HOLD – launches today with a private view, before opening to the public for 10 days!

📅 12 to 21 June, open daily 10am-6pm

📍 School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies
University Road
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 JT

🥂 Join the artists for a Private View of .degree.show on Thursday 11 June, 5.30–8pm (with speeches at 6.30pm)

* RSVP via email at [email protected] *

HOLD brings together 34 undergraduate Fine Art students graduating from the University of Leeds this summer.

Over the past couple of years, our communal studios have held us and our work together. Side-by-side, we have developed distinct practices that explore a huge range of materials, issues, mediums, ideas and feelings.

Now the same studio spaces offer our work to welcome a wider audience as we take our turn to present the annual degree show. HOLD embraces the shared studio as a place and a way for making connections – amongst ourselves, between us and all the artists who have studied here before, and now with an audience.

Throughout our studies, we have explored and experimented. There have been successes and failures. Most importantly, there has been determination; a devotion to making and thinking, with each artist taking different directions.

HOLD demonstrates this same commitment. It presents a range of mediums from painting to installation, printmaking to video, and is accompanied by a programme of related engagement events running onsite and online.

The studios have now become galleries, and each one defends our desire for the intermingling of forms, mediums and subject matter. We have refused to create false separations and hope a spirit of staying together in our differences rings loud.

Through this, we want HOLD to open a chance for everyone to find the time and space to connect with us and our work, whether quickly or slowly, impulsively or contemplatively, alone or together.

*More info*

Follow the show on Instagram .degree.show for more info & a behind-the-scenes look into the making of the exhibition.

Find out more about the show and how to join us for the private view:

https://hold.leeds.ac.uk/about/

29/04/2026

Pitch: Fine Art Festival of Art 2026 launches today!

📅 29 April to 22 May

Our 2nd year Fine Art students are showcasing their work through a series of projects & exhibitions in a range of venues on campus & across Leeds.

Under the theme of ‘pitch’, the students have come together as thematic groups or as individuals to present their collective concerns, ideas or media in many different public contexts including restaurants, computer departments, pubs, churchyards & mobile sheds.

All spaces, indoors or out, are being considered as possible venues and the opportunity to pitch their work to a diverse range of audience.

pitch: Fine Art Festival of Art 2026 is part of Situation Leeds Festival, happening across May & June 2026, celebrating contemporary art in the public realm. Situation Leeds is supported by Yorkshire Visual Arts Network and Hyde Park Book Club.

Free, all welcome!

*Index of exhibitions*

Flea Circus
29 April to 6 May
7 to 16 May at North Bar, Leeds

Women and Identity
Tuesday 14 April, 10am to 5pm at grounded&co, Leeds

Memories of Meanwood: : A Response to the history of Pyramid of Arts
1 to 18 May at Pyramid of Arts

食飯 (s*k faan)
1 May, 5-11pm at Magic Wok, Bradford

The Shed
2 & 3 May, Dagmar Wood, Headingley
5 & 6 May at Left Bank. Leeds
9 & 10 May at St Michaels Church, Headingley

Beyond the Surface
4 May, 12-2pm at Hyde Park Book Club

Σ(in)+compass
4 to 8 May (online)

Bygones
5 to 8 May, Maurice Keyworth building, University of Leeds

Elsewhere
5 & 6 May, 10am-4pm at Slung Low, The Warehouse In Holbeck

Where Connection Moves Us
5 May, 11am-2.30pm at Hyde Park Book Club

I Eat Therefore I Am
5 to 22 May (online archive project)

Pinch Punch
5 to 22 May in Room 2.07, Sir William Henry Bragg Building, University of Leeds

DND: Interactive Conquest
6 May, 6-9pm at Common Ground, Leeds University Union

Movement
7 to 14 May at Northlight Arts Centre

Counterculture
8 May, 3pm-midnight at the Primrose Pub, Leeds

Leave Me Tender
8 May, 6-8pm at Chunk Bakery, Kirkstall

Life could be beautiful if you let it
9 May, 2-7.30pm at Headingley Enterprise and Arts Centre

RAW: The Visceral and Vulnerable
9 May, 1-6pm at ChapelFortyNine, Leeds

Traces of Form
9 May, 4-8pm at Assembly House

Artificial Ecologies
Invitation only

Find out more about each exhibition and project, and the artists taking part:

https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/fine-art/events/event/3712/pitch-fine-art-festival-of-art-2026

Image: Selection of works by artists taking part in pitch: Fine Art Festival of Art 2026: Molly Clarke and Georgia Warrington; Mia Somerville; Laura Green; Tony Carey; Elsa Guidon; Elizabeth Williams-Bulkeley; Emily Wadsworth.

21/04/2026

* Call for poetry and prose readings for Words Worth Reading: The Writers' Room launch on 27 April *

Contributions are welcome from students, staff and Postgraduate Researchers from the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (at the University of Leeds for an event organised as part of Words Worth Reading: The Writers' Room.

Words Worth Reading: The Writers’ Room is an upcoming exhibition curated by ChrisTaylor, Simon Lewandowski and Lu Rose Cunningham, opening next week in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies’ Project Space.

The exhibition and events programme bring together the Wild Pansy Press (celebrating its 30th year) and an array of London and Northern-based artists who have undertaken its London residency.

The opening event on Monday 27 April (5 to 8pm) will include readings from 6:30 to 7.15pm.

We invite you to give a reading of your original poetry or prose related to one of the following subjects:

• art
• publishing
• printing presses
• communal practices
• community
• experimental literature
• automatic writing
• other related suggestions welcome

If you would like to participate, please email [email protected] with your name, school, title of the reading, duration and sample of writing by 4pm on Friday 24 April.

Individual poetry and prose readings should be a maximum of 5-7 minutes long.

Find out more about the call for poetry and prose readings:

https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/fine-art/news/article/3074/call-for-poetry-and-prose-readings-for-words-worth-reading-the-writers-room

Details about the exhibition & wider events programme of workshops and panel discussion:

https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/fine-art/events/event/3702/words-worth-watching-the-writers-room

📷 Writing workshop at The Writers’ Room. Photo by Lu Rose Cunningham.