The theme of care in art is explored by a panel of artists, curators and academics, with reference to this year’s Turner Prize and artists connected to West Yorkshire.
Curated by Yorkshire Contemporary in partnership with the University of Leeds. In person and online.
How does art care? How do artists embody care within the creative act of making and how does their work project care in all its multiplicities, its potential ethical and moral positions? How best can art, artists and curators create space to represent and engender care for both individuals and wider communities?
Chaired by Turner Prize 2025 co-curator Michael Richmond of Yorkshire Contemporary, this conversation will explore the complexities of care in and of art.
The panel comprises artist-facilitator, researcher and specialist in inclusive arts practice Dr Jade French, visual artist and visual arts instigator Alison McIntyre, curator, lecturer and writer Aïcha Mehrez, artist Sarah Roberts, and curator and writer Tim Steer.
It will examine particular artists and artworks with specific reference to this year’s Turner Prize nominees and artists connected to the West Yorkshire region.
Biographies
Dr Jade French is Future Leaders Fellow in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, and the Faculty of Arts Humanities and Cultures, University of Leeds. She is an artist-facilitator, practice-led action researcher, and specialist in inclusive arts practice.
Her arts practice grew out of her experience of working in social care as a personal assistant in self-advocacy organisations supporting learning disabled people. She has collaborated with a range of learning disabled and/or neurodiverse artists, inclusive arts organisations, and supported studios to innovate inclusive practices in curating, exhibitions, commissioning, and artist development, including international collaborations across Ireland (International Curator Residency and British Council Axis Artist Exchange with KCAT and Pyramid), USA, Brazil (Sesc São Paulo Museum Accessibility Study and Research Group) and Japan (Tokyo 2020 Art Brut World Forum).
In September 2024 she was awarded a Future Leaders Fellowship for the project Inclusive Art for Wicked Problems. Working in partnership with longstanding collaborator, Leeds-based inclusive arts studio Pyramid, the fellowship enables an innovative application of inclusive arts practice to mobilise the expertise and creativity of learning-disabled people across the challenges of the social care system.
Alison McIntyre is a Bradford-based visual artist and producer. She is one of the producing team on OUR TURN, a visual arts festival, delivered through South Square Centre in Thornton, that celebrates Bradford’s visual art sector whilst the spotlight of the Turner Prize is on the district. She is also Visual Arts Instigator at Bradford Producing Hub, most recently partnering with Yorkshire Contemporary and Bradford 2025 on Practice: Bradford – also part of the OUR TURN programme. She is a co-founder of Art Doctors and HATCH and has led a range of community projects exploring art, mental health and wellbeing. Alison’s artistic practice includes drawing, painting, mixed media, textile and performance. She has collaborated with schools and communities on large-scale artworks and murals, and created the collaborative curve stitching project, Threads, that explored the relationship between making and conversation.
Aïcha Mehrez is a curator, writer and researcher based in Folkestone. She graduated from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2011 and from 2016 – 2021, was Assistant Curator of Contemporary British Art at Tate. The most recent exhibition she curated was Sixty Years: The Unfinished Conversation which explored diasporic identity through works from the Tate collection from the past 60 years. Since 2021, Aïcha has been undertaking an AHRC funded PhD with Tate and the University of Leicester titled ‘How might curatorial methodologies centred in care and prevention of harm, help museums to ethically surface and address their colonial and imperial connections?’. Aïcha’s research considers how the work of writers and thinkers such as Stuart Hall, Saidiya Hartman, Sylvia Wynter and Édouard Glissant might be applied to a radical reimagining of the ways in which we curate. Aïcha is also a lecturer on the MA Curating Apprenticeship at University of Teesside/MIMA, an editor for the University of Leicester’s Museological Review and a freelance curator, writer and researcher. Her most recent published texts have been on Lewis Hammond for his exhibition This Glass House at Kunstpalais, Erlangen and Rene Matić for their exhibition Idols Lovers Mothers Friends at Arcadia Missa, London.
Michael Richmond is Curator at Yorkshire Contemporary, where he has recently co-curated Turner Prize 2025 at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery as part of Bradford 2025.
Prior to this he was Curator, International Art, at Tate Modern where he worked on acquisitions, collection displays, community programmes and exhibitions. In his six years at Tate he co-curated the touring exhibitions Nam June Paik (2019), Cezanne (2022) and Philip Guston (2023), as well as curating collection displays by the likes of Vivan Sundaram, Martin Kippenberger, Rosa Barba, Monster Chetwynd and the Beuys’ Acorns installation by Ackroyd & Harvey on Tate Modern’s south terrace in 2021.
Michael curated An Alluring Maquette by Steffi Klenz at NOUA, part of the 2024 European Capital of Culture programme in Bodø. He previously worked at the British Museum on exhibitions including Hokusai (2017), Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece (2018), Manga (2019) and coordinated the Asahi Shimbun Displays.
Sarah Roberts (b. 1980, Eryri, Wales) is a Welsh artist living and working in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Roberts works with objects, media and images amassing them into complex curated installations and multimedia works. Her dynamic body of work spans sculpture, drawing, collage and installation.
Roberts draws inspiration from everyday life, combining mundane materials like plaster, concrete and plastic with domestic detritus and industrial leftovers to create new regenerative environments on an architectural scale. Following a residence in Cultural Collections at the University of Leeds, her most recent major solo exhibition SICK opened across The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery and Treasures of the Brotherton in spring 2025. Exploring environments of care and the bodies within them, it included an immersive installation created in response to the artist’s own experiences of being a carer.
Roberts studied at Chelsea College of Art, and is currently studying MfA in sculpture at The Slade. She also has a degree in Sociology from the University of Leeds and has worked extensively in education and the voluntary sector.
Roberts was selected for the 2022 YSI Sculpture Network; 2018 IN- RUINS residency, 2015/16; Chisenhale Into The Wild programme, ACAVA/ArtQuest residency 2014/15; Parasol Unit Exposure Award 2014; Saatchi New Sensations, 2014. She received a Henry Moore Foundation Artist Award in 2025. She is co-founder and Curator at @Hydeparkartclub and @shelf_london and a PT Associate Lecturer.
Tim Steer is a Senior Project Curator at Hospital Rooms, leading on some of the organisation’s most ambitious, large-scale projects that bring world-class contemporary art into NHS mental health hospitals. He works closely with NHS Trusts, service users, staff, and community partners to co-produce permanent artworks with acclaimed artists, transforming clinical spaces and embedding creativity within models of mental health care. His projects have involved collaborations with leading artists and cultural partners, and have helped shape Hospital Rooms’ reputation as a pioneering force in socially engaged and co-produced arts practice.
He was previously Associate Director at Seventeen Gallery and Associate Curator at Cell Project Space, and has nearly fifteen years’ experience as a curator developing exhibitions, residencies, and research-led projects across public and independent contexts. His writing has been featured in Art Monthly, Artforum, Mousse and ArtReview.
Nnena Kalu, Rene Matić, Mohammed Sami and Zadie Xa are the four artists shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2025.
The Turner Prize is one of the world’s best-known prizes for the visual arts. It aims to promote public debate around new developments in contemporary British art and tickets are free.
The prize is awarded each year to a British artist, and is named in honour of the radical painter JMW Turner. In the year that the UK celebrates the 250th anniversary of Turner’s birth, the Turner Prize is heading to Bradford.
The shortlisted artists – Nnena Kalu, Rene Matić, Mohammed Sami and Zadie Xa – were announced on 23 April 2025, 250 years to the day since the birth of Turner. Their work will feature in the annual Turner Prize exhibition, which takes place at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery. The winner will be announced in Bradford on 9 December 2025.
Explore the Turner Prize 2025 exhibition at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford until 22 February 2026. Admission is free. Turner Prize 2025 is produced by Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture. Delivered in partnership with Tate, Bradford District Museums & Galleries and Yorkshire Contemporary. The University of Leeds is a major supporter of Bradford 2025.
To book your free ticket to view the Turner Prize exhibition, please see here