Emily Hesse (27 April 1980 - 4 November 2022) was a multidisciplinary British visual artist, author and activist.

Projects and exhibitions

In 2012, as part of the Saltburn Arts Fair in

Saltburn-by-the-Sea Saltburn-by-the-Sea, commonly referred to as Saltburn, is a seaside town in the civil parish of Saltburn, Marske and New Marske, in the Redcar and Cleveland unitary authority, in North Yorkshire, England. It is south-east of Hartlepool and so ...

, Hesse exhibited her works, ''I Will Never Forget You. Not For All Of My Days'' and ''We Are As Much What Lies Behind, As We Are Tomorrow.'' at the Saltburn School, where she was artist in residence. During her residency Hesse developed the Class One Project, which with funding from

Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art MIMA, or Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, is a contemporary art gallery based in the centre of Middlesbrough, England. The gallery was formally launched on Sunday, 27 January 2007; since 2014, it has been part of Teesside University. H ...

sought to establish a contemporary art gallery in an old external classroom building. In 2015 Hesse exhibited as part of the Localism exhibition at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art under through her project New Linthorpe, which sought to re-imagine the work of Dr Christopher Dresser at the Linthorpe Art Pottery. During this work, Hesse studied for an MA Ceramics at Sunderland University, to develop her skills as a ceramicist in order to be able to master the skills associated with ceramics and pass them on to her local community. Hesse was selected as an artist for the Great Exhibition of the North in early 2018. When the exhibition organisers announced the sponsorship from

BAE Systems BAE Systems plc is a British Multinational corporation, multinational Aerospace industry, aerospace, military technology, military and information security company, based in London. It is the largest manufacturer in Britain as of 2017. It is ...

Hesse worked with other artists to protest their unexpected sponsorship and following a vocal online campaign she, with her fellow campaigners, were successful in persuading the company to discontinue its support for the event. In 2018, Te Me No Press published Hesse's auto-biographical book, ''Black Birds Born from Invisible Stars'', which was commissioned by curator George Vasey for the exhibition 'The Everyday Political' at the Lake Gallery at

Southwark Park Southwark Park is located in Rotherhithe, in central South East London, England, and is managed by the London Borough of Southwark. It first opened in 1869 by the Metropolitan Board of Works as one of its first parks. It was designed by Alexander ...

Galleries in London. Later that year, Workplace Gallery in

Gateshead Gateshead () is a town in the Gateshead Metropolitan Borough of Tyne and Wear, England. It is on the River Tyne's southern bank. The town's attractions include the twenty metre tall Angel of the North sculpture on the town's southern outskirts, ...

hosted Hesse's solo exhibition '''The Taste of this History: a Church in my Mouth, which explored the challenges faced by female, working-class, artists such as herself. In 2022 as part of The Tetley Jerwood Commissioning Programme, Hesse created ''The Witches’ Institution (W.I.)'', an exhibition imagined and developed with Professor Andrea Philips,

Baltic Baltic may refer to: Peoples and languages *Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian *Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originatin ...

Professor and Director BxNU Research Institute,

Northumbria University Northumbria University (legally the University of Northumbria at Newcastle) is a Public research university, public research university located in Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England, North East of England. It has been a university since 199 ...

Publications

* ''Black Birds Born from Invisible Stars'' (2018)

Awards

* Nominee,

Paul Hamlyn Foundation Paul Hamlyn Foundation is a registered charity, and a company limited by guarantee, which has been established in its current form since 2004, succeeding an earlier incarnation that was founded in 1987, which itself formalised established philan ...

Awards for Artists (2013) * Runner-up, The Arts Foundation (2020) *

Henry Moore Foundation The Henry Moore Foundation is a registered charity in England, established for education and promotion of the fine arts — in particular, to advance understanding of the works of Henry Moore, and to promote the public appreciation of sculpt ...

Artist Award (2020)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hesse, Emily 1980 births 21st-century British women artists Alumni of Durham University Alumni of the University of Sunderland British women ceramicists English ceramicists English women artists People from Middlesbrough 21st-century English women 21st-century British artists 2022 deaths