By One’s Light
Callum Ashcroft, Alfie Carter, Milly Hawitt, Katarina Jimack, Will Metcalfe, Megan Nicholson, Eliza O’Boyle, Anna-May Slowie, Emma Steensma
11-14 November 2026
Preview: Tuesday 10 November 5-8pm
Megan Nicholson, Puddle, 2026, oil pastel, acrylic and pencil on paper, 27x35cm
‘By One’s Light’ is a cross-university group exhibition organised and curated by current students and recent graduating Fine Art alumni of Slade School of Fine Art and Newcastle University. The title refers to the sixteenth century idiom of the same name, that describes one’s ‘light’ as a metaphorical symbol of a person’s agency, instinct and moral code; in an artistic context this old phrase still holds strong as an endorsement of originality. These values reflect our aims for the exhibitions, encouraging artistic instinct and integrity in the current political and social climate.
The exhibition will be showcased first in London at hARTslane gallery (29-31 October), followed by a second staging at Vane gallery, Gateshead (11-14 November). The touring exhibition is supported by Newcastle University’s Make it Happen Fund and Bartlett Fund. There is a strong intention by the organisers to further inspire a collaborative chain of opportunity across UK art universities.
Callum Ashcroft, Protest 2, 2026, woodcut on paper, 45x60cm
Callum Ashcroft (Newcastle University) explores the volatilities of the modern political world in conjunction with his own working class experience. Ranging from abstract depictions of unrest and turmoil to imagined worlds drenched in satirical irony, his body of work spans painting, printmaking and sculpture. Recent exhibitions include: ‘Lead in the Pipes’, Vane, Gateshead, ‘In a Pinch’, The NewBridge Project, Newcastle upon Tyne (2025), and ‘Oxygen’, Hadrian House, Newcastle upon Tyne (2026).
Alfie Carter (Slade School of Fine Art) explores the personal and generational histories of the Cockney working class. His work – both sculpture and painting – examines culture, language, and architectural environment, and how these were shaped by the socio-economic developments of the post-war period. He is particularly interested in how this cultural history is remembered and persists in the Essex ‘Cockney diaspora’ in which he was born, and how rhythms, slang, and oral traditions shape belonging and enforce boundaries of class and place. Recent exhibitions include: ‘Disposition’, Nancy Victor, London (2025), ‘Undergraduate Degree Show’, Slade School of Fine Art, and ‘YEARBOOK’, Crème Fraiche, London (2026). Carter is currently represented by Crème Fraiche.
Milly Hawitt (Newcastle University) is a Bristol-based painter whose practice is informed by coastal Cornwall, where natural landscape meets industry. She draws upon Cornwall’s environment and industrial legacy through an intuitive approach; surface, form, and process carry traces of place. Focusing on rust as both subject and method, she explores the interaction between industrial materials, man-made media, and natural processes to create richly textured, vibrant abstract paintings. Embracing unpredictability, she allows materials themselves to influence outcomes, continuing to transform the works long after she’s finished painting, giving the material agency beyond the artist’s intervention and embodying the changing forces of nature. Recent exhibitions include: ‘NTLAF’, Candid Gallery, London, ‘A Sense of Belonging’, Newcastle University, and ‘Undergraduate Degree Show’, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne (2026).
Katarina Jimack (Newcastle University) is a London born, ceramics focused sculptor. She frequently uses humour as a tool within her work, creating bizarre and uncanny figures through an instinctive and playful creation process. Her practice doesn’t obsess over fixed ideas and is instead shaped by the capricious nature of clay. Recent exhibitions include: ‘Lead in the Pipes’, Vane, Gateshead (2025), ‘Visage’, Black Cat Café, London, and ‘Oxygen’, Hadrian House, Newcastle upon Tyne (2026).
Will Metcalfe, Fruit Flies (1), 2025, oil and sand on canvas, 168x138cm
Will Metcalfe (Slade School of Fine Art) is a London born artist who, through painting, examines the physical and philosophical mechanisms of memory. His paintings depict ‘light that sticks to you’, moments when the past and present are homogenised; all memories are eventually corrupted and overridden. His work asks if an overwhelming intake of bright light, whether from sun, bulb or screen, can fog what is most personal; accurate recollection therefore is made ever more difficult in a hyper digital age. Recent exhibitions include: ‘Disposition’, Nancy Victor, London (2025), ‘Visage’, Black Cat Café, and ‘Five for Silver’, The Old Waiting Room, London (2026).
Megan Nicholson (Newcastle University) is an audio-visual artist from the North Wales/Shropshire border. Their body of work takes influence from creating visual connections to listening and receiving sounds through a variety of audio work, painting and drawing transpositions. The audio works consist of a wide range of sampling and mixing from daily clamour, transposing audio to visual through automatic drawing and pre-learned notions of composition, abstraction, frequency and colour. Recent exhibitions include: ‘Lead in the Pipes’, Vane, Gateshead, ‘In a Pinch’, The NewBridge Project, Newcastle upon Tyne (2025), and ‘Oxygen’, Hadrian House, Newcastle upon Tyne (2026).
Eliza O’Boyle (Newcastle University) is originally from a small town in Derbyshire at the edge of the Peak District. She takes influence from both her urban and rural surroundings, extracting form, pattern and colour to create paintings, sculptures and prints. Her recent work is part of a series titled ‘From Razor Wire to Ribbons and Bows’. Recent exhibitions include: ‘Perennial’, Haarlem Artspace, Wirksworth (2025 and 2026), ‘Reflect’, Newcastle University, and ‘In a Pinch’, The NewBridge Project, Newcastle upon Tyne (2025), and ‘I Think I’ve Talked To Her’, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne (2026).
Anna-May Slowie, Valley of Love, 2026, mild steel and leather ribbon, 100x30x45cm
Anna-May Slowie (Slade School of Fine Art) is an artist born in Newcastle, now living and working in London. Her sculptural practice is informed by bodily interactions with material, working with substances that hold the residue of touch, transformation and resistance. She bears witness as a form of care; through attentive processes and an interest in the overlooked, her work cycles through rituals of breaking and rebuilding, echoing the quiet strength it takes to persist against difficulties. Her practice is environmental and reactive, using architecture to create spatial encounters that implicate the viewer in intimate and uneasy ways. Recent exhibitions include: ‘ongoing going on’, The Bomb Factory Holborn, and ‘Carpe Diem’, Safehouse 2, London (2025), and ‘Undergraduate Degree Show’, Slade School of Fine Art, London (2026).
Emma Steensma (Slade School of Fine Art) is an artist from Amsterdam, currently based in London. She sees work and life more like a poem than a standard set of rules. In her art she likes to make room for the possibility of change using sculpture, drawing and installation. Her art is about systems, moving between, breaking in and out of them. Recent exhibitions include: ‘DREAM Bleeds’, All Street Gallery, Amsterdam (2023), ‘Five for Silver’, The Old Waiting Room, London, and ‘Beeldmakers #7’, Vandejong, New York (2026).
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