Bethany Stead
Ode to St. Catherine, glazed ceramic, 28 x 18 x 37
Open eyed dreams, 2024, glazed ceramic, graphite, cloth, 20 x 19 x 38 cm
​Bethany Stead (b.1995, Wakefield) is an artist based in Newcastle upon Tyne. She was recently awarded an The Elephant Trust Grant (2024) and the Eaton Fund (2024).
Working across drawing, painting, sculpture and textiles, Bethany draws upon allegory, iconography, feminist theory, psychology and sci-fi through visual storytelling and object making, culminating in symbolic spaces that disrupt our fragile socio-political fabric. She attempts to explore the discomfort and awkwardness of inhabiting bodies, both biological and artificial, the history of bodily health, the human connection to clothing and costume, notions of worship and religion, and our relationship with the non-human sphere through the lens of class.
Metamorphic and animalistic drawings and sculptures stand as beings, residing within unsettling or idyllic spaces. Symbolism and archetype are woven into imagery, influenced by intergenerational storytelling and personal writing as therapy. Embodying a reconnection to forgotten worlds and ideas, she rejects escapism, to embrace complicated experiences of class, gender, sexuality, health, ecology, technology and grief.
​
Selected Solo Exhibitions
Snatch a Thread, Moving Gallery, Sunderland, UK (2024)
Dip Your Wick, 'The PUBlic Window', Republic Gallery, Blyth, UK (2022)
​
​
Selected Group Exhibitions
Sustainable Clay, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne,UK (2025)
A Pocket Full of Plenty, Hypha Studios - Netil House, London, UK (2025)
​​The Omnipotence of Dream, Salford Museum and Art Gallery, Greater Manchester, UK (2025)
ING Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London, UK (2024)
​Antigone Revisited, Hypha Studios HQ, London, UK (2024)
Interlaced, Constantine Gallery - Middlesbrough Art Week, Middlesbrough, UK (2024)
Portals, Gallagher and Turner, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (2024)
​Counterweight, Newcastle Arts Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (2024)
North East Emerging Artist Award Shortlist, Seaton Delaval Hall, Seaton Sluice, UK (2024)
​CRAWL SPACE, The Crypt Gallery, St Pancras, London, UK (2023)
Gatherings, SET Woolwich, London, UK (2023)
Hypha, Church of St John, Healey, Riding Mill, Northumberland, UK (2023)
​Collected, 36 Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (2022)
Loose Time, Vane Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (2021)
​
​
Salutations, 2024, installation of six works on sewn paper panels, acrylic, tempera, wax pencil, oil pastel, thread, wood frame, 223.5 x 118 x 72 cm
Time At Hogchester Arts
"You’ve come a long way”, uttered the train conductor as she punched my paper ticket. I smiled and agreed through heavy eyes well into my seven hour journey. I came a long way, though sometimes, it doesn’t feel like it. I keep on walking, running, riding, but the path stretches endlessly, like a self-weaving rug.
When I arrived at Hogchester, emerging from Northern midwinter, I was feeling husk-like, drained from my busiest year in the studio. The wheels were turning, but my brain struggled to catch up. I was nervous, I knew I had to shake off the weight of the year, shed skins and surrender to something new. When Chantal greeted me at the station, she radiated a warmth like home - we’d met very briefly before, but my connection to her work gave me a deeper, quieter knowing, like recognizing a shared language or kinship.
From that moment I let the mask fall. I spent the first night and day alone with the goats, pigs, horses, critters and plants. Drawing my bedroom curtain the first morning, I locked eyes with a goat in a hilarious, intense stare-off. I got to know them, it can be easier to do with other beings than with people, and they helped me prepare for that. I hadn’t met Grant before, but we connected so well. For his sharing of stories, reference, and thoughts, I’m sincerely grateful! We talked into the night, cooked for each other drank wine and exchanged difficult and beautiful experiences. His approach to his work rekindled something in mine.
Preparing for a show three months away, I was loosely researching yoga cleansing rituals, religious penitence and textile histories - yet as always, I reach out disparately for reference in all corners of life. Faces of surrounding creatures, spiraling weeds I walked on, trees I brushed with, salty stones I held, and the holloway that swallowed us whole - all fed into the work along the way - and still rotate in my subconscious archive. The residency culminated in large, expressive pencil and ink drawings, and smaller tempera works on handmade paper. Hogchester became a place where time stood still. I’m deeply grateful to have lingered in that gothic land, and for the quiet, lasting fruit it continues to offer my inner world."
