Emma Bentley Fox

Emma Bentley Fox is an artist living and working in Leeds, ‘Mom’ with Party Mom Society, studio holder at Patrick Studios (ESA), co-host of Social Art Network Leeds, and member of DISrupt.

Emma Bentley-Fox (she/they), is a socially-engaged, trauma-informed artist & facilitator with a multidisciplinary and research-led approach. Their medium emerges organically from research & the creative process - often shaped by collaboration - but photography is central to her practise. Specifically, analogue photography & processes, archives (personal & institutional) and expanded photography.

She is particularly drawn to colour analogue photography, and the expansiveness and possibility of the image/texture in analogue processes. They relate this back to their own experiences of gender and queerness. Archives also similarly are not fixed. They are places of negotiation, fluid, open to interpretation and Emma is interested in what can be found and lost in the gaps.  

As a Disabled & Neurodivergent artist, themes around ‘health’, ‘recovery’ and ‘wellbeing’ run throughout her practice, and she values embodied knowledge. Her work is grounded in anti-capitalist, feminist, crip and decolonial theory. She is interested in image-making as community-making, and collaboration, to generate moments of joy, humour, healing and intimacy and kinship - to highlight voices often overlooked, and imagine powerful new futures. Recently they have been exploring The Darkroom as a site of queer emergence, transformation & yearning. (Safelight WIP, The Baltic, 2023)

She was awarded Arts Council England’s ‘DYCP’ (2022) grant for a year of R&D and archiving, of my 7 years of work documenting & creating photo-portraits of LGBTQIA+ communities across the North of England. I was awarded the 2023 Emergent Artist at The Baltic, & a 3-month residency with The Baltic x Shape Arts for this work.

Her work has been described as joyful, intimate, surreal, playful, tender and nostalgic. Lily Lavorato describes her work as “holding space for the unanswerable and undefinable. ‘Confessions of a Party Mom, 2023’, touches tenderly on beauty, friendship, pain and joy with a holistic nod to time passed and lives changed.”

She describes her own work as a way for her to process and explore her own experiences, particularly navigating queerness, disability and an ill body, and work with others to do the same.

Alongside independent practise she has worked institutionally as an Engagement Curator, and led on heritage projects, artist-led urban planning & development, international residency projects, young people’s summer schools and learning programmes, and more:

• Programme Producer at East Street Arts. Working with local residents and Leeds City Council, to develop the UK’s first Artist-Led Neighbourhood Plan (Mabgate, Lincoln Green and Burmantofts). Instigating and delivering 3 years of an Annual East Street Arts young person’s Summer School, and delivering We Need Queer Liberation Now, a 2 year Queer digital artist support programme, for 8 international LGBTQIA+ artists with experiences of borders and censorship. Focusing on co-creating a non-productive queer space, providing artists with new tools for self-care and reflection, WNQLN was delivered in partnership with The European Cultural Foundation, Performing Borders and artist Sayang Sounds.

• Producer at Andro & Eve, coordinating Queer cabaret, delivering Gender Awareness workshops, and queer community art projects.

She offers consultation and training in:

Disability Accessibility

Trauma-informed Practise for Cultural Workers

Gender Awareness (Andro & Eve)

Emma also offers limited free slots each year for mentoring opportunities as part of her commitment to resource-sharing and supporting other Queer and Disabled artists to access work within arts and culture. Get in touch to enquire about mentoring opportunities.

Commissions, Exhibitions & Awards

2024

WoW Park Hidden Histories of Woodhouse Moor, The University of Leeds, WYCA

2023

Emergent Artist in Residence, The Baltic x Shape Arts

Confessions of a Party Mom, Hyde Park Art Club

Leeds Artist Show, Leeds Art Gallery

Arts Council England’s DYCP

2022

Convention House Bursary & Studio, East Street Arts

Party Mom Society Presents: Cruising, CLAY

2021

Art Hostel Commission, Art Hostel Leeds, 2021