Lana Locke and Melanie Jackson

May – September 2025

Seed Funding strand: Learn and Grow - In residence

A Feral Plot (Making Sculpture and Other Strategies for Survival) is a new collaboration between artists Lana Locke and Melanie Jackson, an exchange of action research in response to the climate emergency in the field of sculpture.

The residency will provide time and space for Lana and Melanie to explore theirs and other artists’ diverse lived experiences and challenges of making sculpture in the climate crisis. Through making, discussion and sharing, possibilities will be developed to uncover artists’ material agency in an age of climate emergency. Lana and Melanie will look to model more sustainable practice, whilst reclaiming the social and cultural value of sculpture’s material embodiment.

Between May – September, following regional research at the Poor House Reading Rooms, Coles Casting in Dorset, and the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, Lana and Melanie will bring their research to Camberwell. They will transform the space into an open studio to experiment, explore and develop public-facing activities for local communities to engage. This will include workshops with sustainable materials and opening up clay-station play sessions for local families.

A purple hued photo of two women smiling at the camera, there are snake-like pillows wrapped around their necks — **2023 Lana Locke, Barbican Centre, London**

During this time, Lana and Melanie will look to:

Scope real life compromises, solutions and adjustments made by artists and the public alike, aiming to draw out complexity, invention and nuance within the issues of living with a changing climate.

Facilitate knowledge exchange on ecologies of practice that artists, technicians, and climate experts can share to generate ideas on mitigating carbon use.

Model safer, energy efficient ways to use materials responsibly, such as improving local industry links.

Share research and best practices with students, the public, researchers, local school pupils and families, exploring sustainable methods of creating sculpture.

Active Partners

Royal College of Art
University of Plymouth
Poor House Reading Rooms
Coles Casting
Henry Moore Institute
Lyndhurst Primary School

About Dr Lana Locke

Lana Locke is an artist practising in sculpture, installation, painting, drawing, video and performance. She undertook her practice-based PhD (2018) on The Feral, the Social and the Art Object at Chelsea College of Arts, where she had also studied her MA in Fine Art (2012).

She has had solo exhibitions at ADH Gallery (Brompton Chapel) (2024), Lungley Gallery (2019, 2020 and 2023), Liddicoat & Goldhill project space (2018), DOLPH Projects, (2016) and Schwartz Gallery (2014). She has exhibited in group exhibitions at White Conduit Projects (2024), Matt’s Gallery (2023), Hales Gallery (2022), National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, Taiwan (2021), OOF Gallery (2021), Kingston Museum (2019), MOCA Taipei, Taiwan (2018), the Nunnery Gallery (2018) and Block 336 (2015).

She is a Senior Lecturer on BA Fine Art Drawing at Camberwell College of Arts.

About Dr Melanie Jackson

Melanie Jackson (UK) is an artist and educator who works with assemblages of sculpture, writing and moving image.

There is a focus on bio-technologies, and circulatory systems at shifting scales from the miniscule to the planetary. She draws out tales of excess and the absurd, and inventive ways of getting by. She brings together different tactics of representation: mimicry, documentary, myth fabrication, science, performance, humour, animation, political commentary, music, installation, craft and the cultivation of aesthetic delight.

Selected solo exhibitions:

Arnolfini, Aspex, Chapter, San Mei Gallery Block 336, Grand Union, Primary, Banner Repeater, the Drawing Room, Flat Time House, John Hansard Gallery and Matt’s Gallery where she is represented. She has exhibited in group shows including at the Wellcome Collection (London), eva+, (Ireland), DRF Biennale, (Osaka, Japan), ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, (Karlsruhe, Germany).