About

This summer, Fountain Street Arts Project presents Common Ground, a joint exhibition by Bradford artists Lauren Kelly and Jessica Swift. The second in their collaborative series, Common Ground, brings together painting, sculpture, collage, and digital work, exploring their individual but complementary practices. Common Ground, invites audiences to explore the intersections between two evolving artistic practices.

Opening as part of the Thornton Art Trail on 6th–7th June (11am–4pm), the exhibition will continue throughout the summer. Visitors have the first opportunity to view the artists’ third collaborative painting during the opening weekend.

Jessica Swift is a local visual artist. Interested in the methods of making, she aims to allow the viewer to think about the process behind her work, rather than just the finished piece as a whole. This stems from her preferred way of learning due to being neurodiverse. Her work values colour and texture as this is how she feels people learn from her work best. Her work, spanning painting, sculpture and mixed media, is rooted in the idea that making art can help us feel more like ourselves. Through bright colours, loose shapes, and an intuitive approach, she creates pieces that are meant to start conversations about how art is truly understood, and the process a piece goes through from start to completion.

Lauren Kelly is a multidisciplinary visual artist working across painting, collage, photography, and digital media. She has exhibited widely across the UK, including in Bradford, Leeds, Newcastle, Consett, Doncaster and Cambridge. Her practice explores nostalgia, and the aesthetics of hedonism through layered, dreamlike compositions. Recurring use of pink acts as both a lens for nostalgia and cultural code, examining how memory distorts and the complexities of ‘prettiness’ existing without apology.