Maria Chevska (b. 1948, London) is an artist living and working in London. She attended Byam Shaw School of Art, and from 1990 until 2016 she was a Professor of Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. Foremost a painter, she often exhibits her sculpture and installation alongside her paintings. Her works have specifically engaged with poetry, language, and selected writers that connect to, and exist in dialogue with: philosophy, memory, history, and current events. The works emerge through the intersection of idea, material, gesture, and process—a fluid and provisional relationship between the paintings and objects is sustained that will find a completion through the role of a viewer’s participation and reception of the works.

Solo exhibitions of her work include Air Gallery in 1982 and BWA Gallery in Wroclaw, Poland. In 2002 she participated in a touring exhibition of paintings and a new installation entitled Vera’s Room which took place in France at Maison de la Culture d’Amiens. Other group exhibitions she participated in include Art and Sea at John Hansard Gallery and ICA; Crossover (1991) at Anderson O’Day Gallery, and White Out (1995) at the Curwen Gallery. Chevska was awarded by the Arts Council in 1977, Greater London Arts Association in 179-84, Gulbenkian Foundation Printmakers in 1982 and British School at Rome in 1994. Many public and corporate collections include her work including Arts Council, Bolton City and Oldham Art Galleries. 

Significant projects since the early ‘90s include collaborations with artists, and writers leading to numerous publications; a monograph “Vera’s Room, the Art of Maria Chevska” was published by Black Dog in 2005.

Manila-born Filipino artist Leslie de Chavez has been widely recognized for his incisive and sensible forays into history, cultural imperialism, religion, and contemporary life. Responding to urgent material conditions through his deconstructions of master texts, icons, and the symbols of his times, de Chavez strikes a balance between iconoclasm and an affirmative outlook to the relevance and accountability of art to one’s milieu. Leslie de Chavez has held several solo exhibitions in the Philippines, China, Korea, Singapore, UK, and Switzerland. He has also participated in several notable exhibitions and art festivals, which include the “Island Time” Jane Lombard Gallery in NYC 2023, “Far Away But Strangely Familiar” Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum, Slovakia 2019, “Voice of Asia” Arario Gallery, Shanghai China 2017, “The Vexed Contemporary” Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila 2015, “Complicated” Lopez Memorial Museum 2014, the Singapore Biennale 2013, 3rd Asian Art Biennale in Taiwan 2011, 3rd Nanjing Triennial in China 2008, First Pocheon Asia Biennale in South Korea 2007. A two-time award winner (2010/2014) of the Ateneo Art Awards for Visual Art, Leslie de Chavez is also the director/founder of the artist-run initiative Project Space Pilipinas, in Lucban, Quezon.

Isolde Godfrey is an animation director, producer, editor, and artist with an interest and passion for gender equality, public healthcare, and human rights. She studied BA Drama at University of Exeter and received a diploma in Commedia dell’ Arte Acting at Antonio Fava International.

She participated in a group show Once I Had A Vision… The Left Hand of Darkness with her work “The Question of Sex,” which is a video that was inspired by Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness.

Godfrey is the director and founder of Woven Ink, an independent visual minute and animation studio, existing to help people and organisations tell their stories in compelling and beautiful ways that consists of various artists from different fields of art. She also received various awards such as  ‘Reading the Future’ Script Competition 2008, Edinburgh Emerging Artist Award 2011, and the Exeter University’s Paddon Award 2010.

Bree Jonson (b. 1991) graduated from Bachelor of Science, major in Industrial Engineering, at Ateneo de Davao University in 2012; and pursued her ardor for painting afterwards. She paints mostly animals, part inspired from her early exposure to them and part residue from the notion that she was a wolf when she was a child. Having grown out of that thought, she realized that humanity wasn’t such a humdrum at all for people act like, and are, animals. And from there, she paints humanity as is, through their icing topped cunning, impish desires and embroiled relationships; she portrays the various sickly conditions of humanity, a fable played by the cast of any animal except humans.

Michael Muñoz (b. 1973) lives and works in Cainta, Rizal, Philippines. He studied painting at the UP College of Fine Arts in 1993 and pursued a career with the artist-run space and artists collective Surrounded by Water in 1999 and by then, he had exhibited his works in various venues in the country such as Primus Pronuncio at West Gallery, Christiadum at Blanc Peninsula, and In Remembrance at Surrounded by Water. He also participated in exhibitions abroad including Over the Waters at Equator Art Projects in Singapore, Under Construction at The Japan Foundation Forum/Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery Tokyo, Japan, and City Transformers Project at Laznia Center for Contemporary Art in Gdansk, Poland. 

In 2003, Muñoz worked as an exhibition consultant and designer for the Museo ng Kalinangang Pilipino at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, setting- up exhibitions on the indigenous collections of the museum and local craft traditions in the country. In 2005, he helped found MANLILIKHA Artisans’ Support Network (www.manlilikha.org) and since then, he was involved in various heritage advocacy projects through exhibitions, documentation, and promotion of local traditions, craftworks and artisans. 

Muñoz was a recipient of the CCP Thirteen Artists Award for 2012. Presently, he is active in his advocacy org, MANLILIKHA – doing fieldwork, documentation and collaborations with traditional artisans, and producing works for my contemporary art exhibitions.

Bernardo Pacquing (b. 1967, Tarlac) currently lives in Parañaque City. He studied Editorial Design from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. In 1999, he won the Grand Prize from the Art Association of the Philippines for an Open Art Competition (Painting Non-Representational), and was a recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Thirteen Artists Award in 2000. In the same year, he was also given the Freeman Fellowship Grant at Vermont Studio Center in Vermont. Pacquing has shown in both solo and group exhibitions at various local and international venues such as Manila Contemporary, La Salle College of the Arts in Singapore, Osage Gallery Hong Kong, TAKSU Singapore, and Silverlens Gallery.

Estelle Thompson (b. 1960, West Bromwich, England) is a British Post War & Contemporary painter who lives and works in London. She studied at Sheffield City Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art. Teaching has been an important adjunct to her art practice. She has held posts at St. Martin’s School of Art, De Montfort University, and the Ruskin School of Art and the Royal College of Art. Since 1996, she has been a part-time lecturer at the Slade School of Fine Art.

Thompson uses a rigorous process using bands or fields of colour to create visually complex and luminous abstract paintings. She had numerous solo and group exhibitions in Wetterling Gallery at Stockholm, Sweden, L’apres moderne, Projet Midi at Brussels, Belgium, Felim Egan, Estelle Thompson at Rosenberg & Kaufman Fine Art, New York, and Punctuation Paintings, Purdy Hicks Gallery at London, UK.

Thompson also received awards and commissions such as the Milton Keynes Theatre in London, Prudential Award for the Arts, and Arts Council Special Award. Examples of her work have been acquired by a number of major collections including the British Museum, the Arts Council, the British Council and the New York Public Library.