Shared Substrate

26 September to Friday 31 October 2025
Tues, Fridays & Saturdays
11am -3pm

Ancient marks meet modern circuits; living “skins” meet moving bodies. Lauren Egan and Ivan Mack present works that explore the meeting of where technology and ecology touch.

Trace / Substrate

Ivan Mack’s latest work draws connections between Neolithic rock art found on the Yorkshire Moors and modern printed circuit boards. Exploring the symbolic, technological, and cultural tension between ancient human expression and contemporary systems. By etching “gonzo” circuit boards with Neolithic motifs onto copper and fibreboard, Mack positions these objects between function, ritual, and interrogation. The work raises critical questions around cultural appropriation, especially when symbols are lifted from historical or unknown contexts. Can the act of artistic re-use itself be colonial? What duties do we have to lost or fragmented cultures? Blending technology, archaeology, and artistic speculation, the project invites viewers to consider how knowledge is inherited, reinterpreted, and erased, especially in a digital age. For Neurodivergent audiences in particular, the work offers a layered and embodied method of understanding, grounded in repetition, compulsion, and systems-thinking that mirrors Ivan’s own lived experience.

Shared Skin

A living, bio-art installation by artist Lauren Egan that explores the porous, shifting boundaries between bodies, ecosystems, and technology. Working with kombucha SCOBYs (symbiotic cultures of bacteria and yeast), Egan suspends sheets of living material to create sculptural forms that blur the line between skin and canvas. Alongside the physical installation, a projection-mapped video performance features a dancer embodying themes of touch, transformation, and ecological intimacy. Through this multi-sensory approach, the work evokes questions around bodily permeability, microbial kinship, and the ongoing legacies of colonisation on land and self. Egan’s work sits at the intersection of expanded painting, bio-art, and ecofeminist theory, confronting how extractive systems have disrupted our relationships with the natural world. Crafted from vegan, sustainable materials, Shared Skin is an invitation to witness fragility, growth, and decay, while imagining new ways of being in connection with more-than-human worlds.

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CALL-OUT for submissions to 'TURN UP'

Trapezium’s Open Exhibition 2025

This year, we will be holding our FOURTH annual Open Exhibition, at our Gallery in the city centre in the run up to Christmas. The exhibition will run from Saturday 15th November to Saturday 20th December 2025, alongside the Turner Prize on show at Cartwright Hall and Our Turn, Bradford’s Visual Arts festival, which are taking place at the same time.

We are asking for all artists to send us your submissions. 

The exhibition is open to any Bradford based artist, creative or group. 

We welcome artwork in all forms - from drawing and painting to photography, textiles and crafts, as well as collage, 3d sculpture, and video - on a theme of your choice. While we encourage artwork from experienced artists, photographers and creatives, this is a great opportunity for enthusiastic beginners too!

Deadline for Submissions Sunday 19th October 2025

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Open, Themed and Artist's Galleries

NEW: Seeds Project Gallery

A Series of Open, Themed and Artist's Galleries of local Bradford's Artists, Photographers and other Creatives.

Open for submissions by all.

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Submit Work

Open Galleries

Seeds is an online gallery with images planted there for Bradford's Artists, Photographers and other Creatives to use and reinterpret in their own way, creating something new that draws on the existing work.

These new artworks can then be submitted to the growing Seeds gallery, branching out to reseed new and inspiring works of art.

Get Involved

Open Seeds Gallery

To keep up to date with what we're doing, follow us on instagram @trapeziumarts