Speaking Studios

Four artists from across the UK share their personal relationships to their studio spaces, giving voice to the importance of the artist’s studio and reflecting its role in supporting the development of artistic practice as a space for learning, and a site for teaching.

Whilst each studio environment is particular to the artist (or artists) that inhabit it, as a series, the starting point for reflection in these presentations allows the artists to each engage with how architectures and infrastructures of the studio facilitate learning and teaching.

This video follow the format of a ‘PechaKucha’ in which each speaker shows 20 slides for 20 seconds per slide, with each presentation lasting 6 minutes and 40 seconds. 

Simeon Barclay is an artist working through performance, installation, drawing, painting, video, photography, sound, writing, and sculpture. He draws on a rich vein of pop cultural sources; exploring the social dynamics of memory, class, desire and inheritance. These themes act as catalysts for producing works with humorous undertones, that come to express the paradoxes and ambiguities of situating and defining ourselves within culture and tradition. Simeon has presented works across spaces in the UK and Europe and received numerous awards.

Emii Alrai is an artist exploring material investigation in relation to memory, critique of the western museological structure and the complexity of ruins. Working primarily in sculpture and installation, her work operates as large- scale realms built in relation to bodies of research into archaeology, and the natural environments from which objects are excavated. Clay vessels, gypsum forms and steel armatures punctuate the spaces Emii creates, calling on the lingering ghosts of Empire and reconsidering our romanticised visions of the past.

Vivian Ross-Smith creates performance, installation, textiles and painting through a sensual, tactile engagement with care and ecology. Her touchable, often wearable work explores notions of comfort, pleasure and disgust in the body. Vivian draws on queering practices and reflects on her islander identity, having been raised in Shetland, as well as her background in social care work. Her multi-sensory work is rooted in place-based, community- building collaboration and explores themes of generosity and reciprocity.

Samra Mayanja is a London-based artist and writer. Her work examines the body’s illegibility and the absurdity of seeking what is inherently lost, ‘a clown-like pursuit of the impossible’. The theme of searching — futile yet hopeful — runs through Samra’s work. She blends sexy-gone-sour slapstick and poetic monologues, with tender vocalisations. She has performed and exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries and theatres, including Cambridge Junction, The Oval, Somerset House, Kampnagel and Transmediale, among others.

Recording: Kenji Takahashi.

Captions and editing: Sixbetween.

This presentation was recorded during ROOM, a one-day gathering that took place on 7 June 2025, marking the tenth anniversary of Freelands Foundation and the first activation of its new home on 12 Errol Street, EC1Y. The day was dedicated to gathering and sharing artist-teaching practices, while serving as a blueprint for mapping the potential of our new space and exploring a vision for the next decade of the Foundation’s work.