Amy Blum, the daughter of an artist who studied at Cal Arts in the 70s under Miriam Shapiro and Judy Chicago. Inevitably Amy was set to become one of the new generation of American feminist artists. Taking as her inspiration the domestic context of her foremothers’ work she critically pastiched the practice of male artists, creating works made within the narrower confines of everyday life.
Blum worked in a variety of media, these selected works parodying the practice of two prominent artists, Christo and Richard Long. She also made bookworks and videos. She divided her time between London and New York where she had been developing work for an exhibition celebrating her receipt of the Nancy Cronce Prize. She had planned on moving to New York with Stella Darby until tragedy struck.
Graham Leroy & Stella Darby GSDesigns
After completing their studies at Central St Martins, Graham Leroy and Stella Darby formed gsd. Their cited influences were boot sales, cheap music, ‘Beat’ Takeshi, Mum’s cooking, Bernard Tschumi and Bauhaus.
The young design team had worked for a number of clients including Tulip Brothers, BlindRedd Comics and Hamblings as well as designing the logo and album covers for Megan Orr’s MOngrel Records.
They were working on their final joint photographic project in Croatia when they met their tragic demise.
Naomi Kane
While spending a summer as a voluntary research assistant with the Behavioural Ecology Research Group at Oxford University, Naomi Kane met Julia Spicer, who visited the Group to research information on racing pigeons for an arts project.
Kane was trained as a scientist, but had aimed to pursue parallel careers in both science and art and has produced work using photography, video and drawing. Her images are clearly very different from the documentary images of a scientist. She is currently prioritising her scientific work in the South Pacific.