Press release

18 OCTOBER 2025

The Pearls: Now is the time to recognise northern female painters

Manchester Contemporary 21^st to 23^rd November 2025. Stand no 216.

A new collective of 20 northern female painters is preparing to exhibit at the Manchester Contemporary on 21^st November 2025. ‘The Pearls’ share a commitment and interest in the critical discourse in contemporary painting, founded by artist Jayne Simpson, with support from Birley Studios and Project Space in Preston.

The group reflects the vitality of women’s painting that is found in the cultural Renaissance happening in the north of England today: intellectually alert, emotionally resonant, and rooted in lived experience. Each artist brings an individual visual vocabulary of mark, colour, and form, yet collectively their work and experiences speak to one another about connection, visibility, and endurance —quietly and powerfully.

As individual artists, the Pearls are gaining critical recognition for their work, the group collectively has several accolades including; Vice Chair of Contemporary British Painting and winner of the CBP in 2019 (Jo Whittle) and was also shortlisted for this year’s John Moores Prize and in 2020 winner of the New Light Prize; shortlisted for the 2024 Contemporary British Painting prize (Alison Critchlow); Jackson’s Painting Prize Winner 2020 (Ruth Murray) British School in Rome Recipients, RCA graduates and Beep Painting Prize finalists.  All have work featured in public and private collections in the UK and internationally.

The Pearls originated from a symposium organised at Birley Studios in Preston by Jayne Simpson in 2024, titled ‘Bananas are not the only paint’. https://www.thebirley.com/bananasarenottheonlypaint

Jayne contemplated, “the ‘standard’ models of critical discourse in painting feel reserved for those in ‘formal’ education or through pricey, private art schools/courses that are being established by those with entrepreneurial ambitions.  My idea was to invite 6 artists and an audience as big as the space can fit, to Preston, to celebrate contemporary female painters and give them a platform and audience to share their experiences of studio practice and what recognition means to them, for free.

The inaugural symposium, ‘Bananas are not the only paint’ was a resounding success, with ripples felt amongst the painting community, far and wide.

The follow-up exhibition ‘The Pearls and the Oyster’ at the Birley Studios, was overwhelmingly well received with over 500 visitors. In addition to the 6 symposium speakers, Jayne also invited artists; Lindsey Bull, Abigail Hampsey and Mandy Payne. Jayne embraced the idea of artists, organically participating with no set commitment, this model felt fresh, contemporary and progressive for female artists,  https://corridor8.co.uk/article/the-pearls-and-the-oyster/

Jayne went on to secure funding, organise and host a second symposium in Spring of 2025 and this time 13 invited painters shared their experience to another packed out audience, again to critical acclaim, clearly evidencing demand for free and open discourse around painting in the north, specifically why and how women choose to paint, how painting practice explores and embodies lived experience for women in this time. https://corridor8.co.uk/article/the-pearls-painting-symposium/

Exhibiting at The Manchester Contemporary for the first time, The Pearls collective of 20 painters, will be presenting painting as a site of inquiry and solidarity: a space where thought, feeling, and form coalesce, where collective presence amplifies individual voices in contemporary painting.

The Pearls painters are:

Roberta Cialfi studied at University of Central Lancashire, BA (Hons) Fine Art, then finished her MA studio practice in 2017. She also studied abroad as an exchange student with the ISEP exchange student program. At the California State University, East Bay, Hayward, CA, US. 2013-2014.
 Based at Birley Artists Studios, Preston, she has most recently featured in ‘The Pearls and the Oyster’, long-listed in the Beep Painting Biennial 2024, selected for the Irving Gallery Open 2025 exhibition and short-listed for The Lido Stores Open Call 2025.

Nan Collantine is an artist-curator with a studio painting practice based at Goyt Mill in Stockport. She was longlisted for the John Moores Prize in 2025 and in 2022 was the recipient of the Castlefield Gallery Award and finalist in the Beep Painting Prize.   Nan completed the Turps Correspondence Course 2020-22 and spent a year with alternative art school, the Islington Mill Art Academy in 2019.  From 2022-2024 she established Mura Ma, a contemporary art space in Stockport showing predominantly female painters. 

Ingrid Christie graduated from The University of Central Lancashire in 2007 and before this was on course to complete a science degree.  Responding to the environment on her doorstep, she describes her practice as free-wheeling and open.  Ingrid is guided by the physical elemental forces of nature as well as the desires of the subconscious.   Her work encompasses drawing, photography, painting and occasionally animation.  

Alison Critchlow trained at Falmouth School of Art, Cornwall and more recently with Turps Art School. She has exhibited widely throughout Britain and has work in several collections in the UK and abroad. In 2021 she was awarded an Arts Council England grant which opened her eyes to a whole new set of artistic possibilities and in 2024 she was shortlisted for the Contemporary British Painting Prize.

Alison has worked closely with the Wordsworth Trust on several projects in recent years, developing ‘Poetry & Paint’ - collaborative, experimental sessions which delve into creative practice. She is based in North Cumbria, with a studio beside the Solway Firth.

Sarah Feinmann qualified in 1981 from Manchester Polytechnic with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art. She practiced as an artist for twenty years before taking a break for family commitments and is now based at Rogue Artists’ Studios in Manchester.  She works across painting, collage, photography, printmaking, and assemblage. In 2019 she held a solo exhibition at the Roper Art Gallery in Bath, and in 2020 completed an MA in Fine Art (Project for Places) at UCLan.

She was selected by GMCA and Castlefield Gallery for the bOlder Talent Development Award for artists over 50, and continues to exhibit with the group, now known as Ten Obstructions, at venues across the North West, including Castlefield Gallery, The World of Glass in St Helens, Salford Art Gallery, Rogue Artists’ Studios, Wigan, and Bolton Hive Gallery.

Sarah Grant has held a painting and curatorial practice since graduating from Glasgow School of Art in 2000. She was a member of the Independent Studios in Glasgow and has exhibited widely, including at Galeri Magnus Karlsson, Sweden and Terrace Gallery, London. She moved back to the North in 2022 to study on the MFA Painting at MMU and joined The Birley Studios at the end of last year. She recently co-curated 'Myriad' an exhibition at Oceans Apart Gallery, Salford, of painters whose work shared a sensibility with Bonnard. She has also co-curated shows at the FG Gallery in Cheshire of contemporary painters from the North West.

Susan Gunn received international recognition when she won the Sovereign European Art Prize. A graduate of Norwich University of the Arts, Gunn has been a practicing artist for over two decades. She has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions at venues including Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, The Fine Art Society, Bo.lee Gallery, HOME Manchester, and the Yale Centre for British Art.

Her paintings are held in collections worldwide. Career highlights include participation in Between Us – the Britain | China Contemporary Art Biennial in Yantai, Time after [()] after Time at The Briggait in Glasgow, Stations of the Cross at the Komechak Art Gallery in Chicago, and Monochromed, curated by Blaize Patrick at The Fine Art Society, London.

Gunn’s painting’s were included in Made In Britain: 82 Painters of the 21st Century at The National Museum in Gdańsk, and she undertook a Masters residency at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. Recent exhibitions include ‘X’ at Newcastle Contemporary Art curated by Narbi Price, Vitalistic Fantasies curated by Paula McArthur with Contemporary British Painting, and the Beep Painting Biennial.

Lela Harris is an award-winning figurative artist, originally from Manchester but now living in Kendal. Her creative practice focuses on uncovering stories of those often overlooked by history and marginalised by society. Her work is inspired by historical research and the use of different mediums, techniques and surfaces; resulting in an expansive portfolio of work with a strong focus on portraiture.

Kate Jacob trained in textiles at Manchester Metropolitan University, and has completed the Turps Correspondence Course, and the Fine Art Mentoring at Morley College, London. She regularly shows in exhibitions across the UK, has exhibited at the Garves Gallery, Sheffield and recently had a solo show at Mura Ma Gallery, Manchester.  More recently she’s been involved in curating shows, including A Bell is A Cup, that featured 60 international artists from across a broad spectrum of what painting is today.

Julie Mayer is a painter and studio holder at The Birley Studios, in Preston; she studied both BA (1997) and MA  (2019) Fine Art at the University of Central Lancashire during which time she was shortlisted for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries.

Selected group exhibitions/residencies/curating include; ‘Artist in residence’, Plas Bodfa, ‘Bodfa Continuum: the possibilities of time’, Anglesey (2022), ‘Lockdown Garden’, also curated this first exhibition in the newly, ACE funded, Birley Gallery, (2022), ‘Far Away Inside’, Thames-Side Studios Gallery, London, (2023), ‘Birley Studio members’, Manchester Contemporary, (2023), ‘Pearls and the Oyster’, Birley Gallery, (2024), ‘Surfacing’ curated exhibition of Julie Saul’s’ work, Birley Gallery, (2024), shortlisted for “Derek Hill Foundation fellow, British School Rome, (2024), ‘Remark: contemporary Abstract painting by 4 Northern Artists’, Chester Visual Arts, Chester, (2025).

Ruth Murray graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2008 and was the Derek Hill Scholar at the British School at Rome. She received grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation in 2021 and 2024 and won the Jackson’s Painting Prize in 2020. She is an elected member of both Contemporary British Painters and Contemporary British Portrait Painters. In 2024 she was the International Women’s Resident, Barossa Valley, Australia. Her work is in private and public collections worldwide, including UNESCO’s Creative Cities Collection, Manchester Art Gallery, and the Whitaker Museum.

Jen Orpin studied at Manchester Metropolitan University (BA 1996) and has been a member of Rogue artists’ Studios since 2000, she is also a Member of Manchester Academy of Fine Arts. She co-founded Rogue Women in 2019 and has organised and curated four survey exhibitions of its members and invited guest artists from around the UK and is the founder of A Small Space Artist Collective. Her motorway paintings have featured in several publications including the Guardian online and twice in the Observer’s New Review and on BBC Radio 6music and ITVX. As well as being selected and invited into group shows across the UK and abroad, she’s also exhibited at art fairs in Manchester, London, South Korea and has been selected for the last three Royal Academy Summer Shows. She’s had solo shows in Manchester, London and Seoul and her work is held in private collections both here and internationally. Her work is also held in two public collections including New Art Gallery, Walsall and Manchester Art Gallery.

Dr Heather Mullender-Ross is an artist and academic based in Preston, UK. She has a multi-disciplinary practice, as a solo artist and as part of the collaborative duo 'Artist A & Artist B' (with Jackie Haynes). In 2023, she completed a practice-based PhD from Newcastle University, which concentrated on the work of German artist, Kurt Schwitters, with a particular focus on his time exiled in Britain and his final artwork, the Merz Barn (1947-48). Heather is Course Leader of the MA Fine Art programme at the University of Lancashire, Preston, and she is a member of the Birley Artist Studios. 

Recent projects include: ‘Women in Print: The Caravan Press’, a two-year programme of exhibitions at Allan Bank, Grasmere (National Trust), co curated with artist and researcher, Tracy Hill and ‘The Long Haul’ a new commission by ‘Artist A & Artist B’ for The Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, as part of Liverpool Independent’s Biennial 2025.

Jayne Simpson is a visual artist, mentor, educator and curator in the North West of England. She has taught visual art in further and higher education and privately for the last 30 years and now teaches life drawing and mentors privately with individual artists and organisations alongside her studio practice at The Birley Studios and Project Space, Preston.

She has recently organised and hosted symposiums and exhibitions of female painters from the North of England, this work has been gratefully supported by Arts Council England and Lancashire Sports and Culture Fund.

She is an exhibiting and commissioned artist and her practice reflects on memory and personal histories. She is responding to the passing of time and the human condition, especially as the lived, female experience.

Fiona Stirling is an artist, mother, and educator. Her PhD explores the impact of time and space in the work of painters who are mothers.  Currently, Fiona manages the BA (Hons) Fine Art Painting degree at the University Centre St Helens, and most recently, she presented at MTU Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork, at the 2024 “Painting in the Expanded Field: a symposium.”

Helen Thomas is a contemporary British painter based in Wakefield, England. She graduated from Falmouth School of Art (BA Fine Art) and completed a year of postgraduate study with Turps Art School. Helen works with drawing and painting to consider humanity’s relationships with plants.

Solo exhibitions: No patch of green too small, presented by Huddersfield Art Gallery and University of Huddersfield, 2025; ’Habitat’, Mura Ma, Manchester, 2024; ‘Dandelions and Double Yellows’, Wakefield Cathedral, 2021.
 
Group exhibitions include: Planted, The FG Gallery, Cheshire, 2025; Planting Ideas, St Barbe Museum and Art Gallery, Hampshire, 2024; Babble, Ilkeston Contemporary, Derbyshire, 2023; Entwined: Plants in Contemporary Painting, Huddersfield Art Gallery, 2022 and 20-21 Visual Arts, Scunthorpe, 2023; Conversations with Nature, The Art House, Wakefield, 2022; Jerwood Drawing Prize 2016.

Katie Tomlinson is a painter based in Manchester. She holds an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London (2021–2023), where she was supported by the Basil H. Alkazzi Scholarship Award.

Recent solo exhibitions include Fantasy Girls (2024) at Liminal Gallery, Margate, UK; They Only Want You When You’re Seventeen (2024) at LKIF, Seoul, South Korea; At Least Buy Me Dinner First (2023) at Brooke Benington, London, UK; and Fight The Moon (2022) at Paradise Works, Manchester, UK.

In 2025, Tomlinson was awarded an Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice grant, was shortlisted for Tees Valley Artist of the Year, and longlisted for the John Moores Painting Prize. In 2024, she was shortlisted for both The Hari International Art Prize and the BEEP Painting Biennial. That same year, she exhibited in 40 Years of the Future: Painting at Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, UK; Liminal Salon at Liminal Gallery, Margate, UK; The Pearls and the Oyster at The Birley, Preston, UK; Viewing Room at Gallery Supermarkt, Tokyo, Japan; and A Mirror to Vanity at Brooke Benington, London, UK.

Matilda Wainwright completed a foundation at City Lit in London in 2015, following a career as an Art Director in Film & TV.  She has co-established the East Wing group who showed regularly together in London and began an MA at City & Guilds Art School in Kennington basing her studio practice at Thames Side Studios in Woolwich.

After relocating to the northwest Matilda completed an MFA in Painting at Manchester School of Art in 2024. In 2023 she set up the FG Gallery an artist led not- for -profit space to provide a platform for emerging and mid-career painters in the north west and beyond.

Joanna Whittle is a painter based in Sheffield. She is Vice Chair of Contemporary British Painting  and was winner of the prize in 2019. This year she was shortlisted for first prize for the John Moors Painting  Prize and has been an exhibitor in 2018 and 2023.  In 2020  she was winner of the New Light prize.  She is a lead artist for the Contemporary Art Academy and a founding member of the Heavy Water Collective.   Her work focuses on temporary structures in empty and flooded landscapes, on a small or miniature scale, which act as metaphors for our own transience and experience of being in the world. Her shrine paintings depict makeshift constructions in dark woodlands which speak of rituals of mourning and memorial in the landscape.

Hannah Wooll studied at Norwich School Of Art (1995-96), Manchester Metropolitan University (1997-2000) where she gained a 1st Class Degree in Fine Art, Painting; and The Royal Academy Schools (2000-03) where she received the May Cristea Award for Fine Art for her final show.  She has exhibited widely in the UK and overseas.  Her current practice draws upon her role as a mother and an artist, and the balance of juggling family life with an art career, drawing on these aspects of domestic and family life, and making work that is both intimately familiar and claustrophobically uncanny.

Ends

For further information or to arrange an interview please contact Nan Collantine | 07467 396 419 | nancycollantine@gmail.com

Notes

With special thanks to The Birley Studios and Project Space, Preston for their continued support and encouragement. Also to Arts Council England, Lancashire Sports and Culture Fund and SpaceHive contributors.