25 October-19 November 2021

We are pleased to announce the second Net//Work Residency, in partnership with British Council and DAS Belfast. Wysing Arts Centre will host artists Laura Andreato, Halik Azeez, Wajeeha Batool, and Wendy Teo during this four week online residency, with Anna Bunting-Branch as artist mentor.

Net//Work offers time for reflection, research, practice, skills exchange, and professional networking opportunities focused on digital artistic practices and technologies. This autumn's residency artists are internationally based across Brazil, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The residencies will consist of online mentoring, group conversations, problem solving surgeries, guest talks and workshops with external curators and artists and 1-2-1 tuition. Following the residency, artists will have the opportunity to participate in an online exhibition hosted by each residency partner.

British Council in partnership with Wysing Arts Centre and Digital Arts Studios

Laura Andreato is a visual artist and art educator, set and costume designer. Laura graduated in Visual Arts at São Paulo University, holds a master's degree in Visual Poetics and is currently pursuing her doctorate.

Laura has exhibited in sole and collective shows in museums and galleries both within Brazil and globally. Prominent exhibitions include Pensamiento Salvaje, part of Bienal Sur (Buenos Aires, 2017); Le Royale (La Maudite, Paris, 2014), Deslize (Museu de Arte do Rio de Janeiro, 2014) and Paradiso, Museu de Arte de São Paulo -MASP (São Paulo, 2012).

Laura has also participated in the Pivô Pesquisa Program 2019, 13th artistic residency at Red Bull Station 2017 and in 2018 she nominated for the Pipa Award. In 2014 she was in residence at Cité des Arts, selected by the Institut Français.

Halik Azeez is a new media artist based in Colombo Sri Lanka with a background in journalism and critical discourse analysis. His work reflects on technologies of power as mediated through contemporary culture, lived experiences and media.

Transformations within Sri Lanka’s post-war urban landscape is a central archive from which Azeez draws, working across a range of mediums such as photography, video, digital interventions, writing, installation and publication.

In 2019 he co-founded The Packet, an independent community of artists which works with publication, digital interventions and site specific installations. He has held solo exhibitions at the Saskia Fernando Gallery, Colombo (2014 & 2021) and exhibited widely both locally and internationally including at the Ishara Foundation, Dubai (2019 & 2021), the Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa (2016, 2019 & 2020), The Art Foundation, Athens (2017), Edinburgh Festival Fringe (2017), the Karachi Biennale (2019) and Colomboscope (2015, 2016, 2017 & 2019). 

Wajeeha Batool is an artist based in Lahore, Pakistan. Wajeeha earned her Bachelors and Masters degrees in Visual Arts at the Beacon House National University (BNU) where she was subsequently a Montessori teacher.

Wajeeha investigates the relationship between fantasy and reality, drawing on her experience to layer and create systematic chaos in her work. Her use of both organic forms and pixelated shapes serve as reference to living organisms as well as the world of technology. These patterns work together in harmony, often superimposed upon the other, to create a reverie of unpredictable movement and transparent effects.

Wajeeha’s artwork has been shown in exhibitions in Alhamrah Art Gallery, Lahore, Karachi Art Summit, Sanat Initiative Art Gallery Karachi: Reading Between the Lines, Taseer Gallery, Lahore: Domestic Bliss and Antidote Gallery Dubai. She also won a second place award for Arts Contest from Shaukat Khanum Hospital, Title: Smoking Kills. 

Wendy Teo is a Malaysian based artist, UK ARB/RIBA Chartered Architect, Curator, Researcher and Tutor. Wendy believes an innovative, cutting-edge approach to design and making has capacity to revitalise craftsmanship of the region; stating social-culture dialogue as the driving force behind her design pursuit.

In her award winning design practice Wendy Teo Atelier, she designed a range of nature and culture inspired interactive sculptures, furniture, architectural installation and publication. With Borneo Laboratory, Wendy currently focuses on developing a series of projects that are inspired by the crafts language and materials found from abundant landscape and cultural scape of Borneo.

Wendy Teo’s projects were endorsed by a number of international awards such as Holcim Sustainable Next Generation Award (First Prize), Archiprix, and Threadneedle Prize. Her recent furniture design was selected as a finalist in ‘Asia Design Award’ 2018. Wendy has shown in prominent exhibitions such as 2013/14 Archilab ‘Naturalising Architecture’ exhibition curated by Pompidou Center director Frédéric Migayrou and FRAC Orlean Director Marie-Ange Brayer.

Anna Bunting-Branch (born 1987, Cambridge, UK) is an artist and researcher based in London. Recent solo presentations include Warm Worlds and Otherwise, QUAD, Derby (2020) and Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2018), and The Labours of Barren House, Jerwood Space, London (2017).

Selected group presentations and events include Soft Bodies, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester (2020); Crepuscolo (DUSK) (2020), Bastione Sangallo, Loreto; you feel me_, FACT, Liverpool (2019); All His Ghosts Must Do My Bidding, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2019); La Nit del Cos, Bombon Projects, Barcelona (2019); Waking the Witch: Old Ways, New Rites, UK venues (2018-2019); Landscapes of the Future, Helsinki Contemporary (2018); POEKHALI!, Bergen Kunsthall (2018); Hauntopia/What If?, The Research Pavilion, Venice (2017); I AM SF,CCA Derry~Londonderry (2017); Witchy Methodologies, ICA, London (2017).

Her published work includes Fandom as Methodology, Goldsmiths Press (2019); ‘More generous and more suspicious’—Feminist SF as a worldbuilding practice, MAP Magazine (2018); figure, feels,fantom, ArtLicks, Issue 22 (2018). Anna is currently undertaking a practice-related PhD at Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, supported by the AHRC London Arts & Humanities Partnership. In 2019 she was awarded an Arts Council England Project Grant. Moving between different practices–including painting, writing and animation–her work explores science fiction as a methodology to re-vision feminist practice and its histories. www.annabuntingbranch.com