Speaking Volumes

Monica Valentine’s primary artistic practice takes the form of iridescent tactile sculptures tightly packed with small beads and sequins. The process of creating the sculptures, which Valentine has worked with for most of her life, is rhythmic, assured and mindful. Valentine has been blind since birth and wears prosthetic eyes. She has a great interest in colour and relates to colour through her other senses. Valentine likes the colour red the most and often describes her ability to feel “warm” red objects and “freezing” green objects.

Monica Valentine was born in 1955 in San Mateo, California. She has exhibited at venues including Shibuya Koen-dori Gallery in Tokyo, Nina Johnson Gallery in Miami and SFO Museum in San Francisco, and participated in art fairs in New York, Osaka and Tokyo. Valentine has worked at Creative Growth in Oakland, California since 2012. 

For Nicole Storm, the creative process is a way of archiving, documenting, processing, and communicating. Newspaper, cardboard, letters, post – anything she can find, she draws on. Storm rarely sits still while she works; she moves around the studio with her papers adding layers of colourful details and textural notes, taking the elevator up and down, participating in conversations and retreating to corners. In recent years, Storm has developed a strong pedagogical aspect to her artistic practice, leading creative workshops for members of the public.  

Nicole Storm was born in 1967 in California. She has participated in many exhibitions and art fairs, including Frieze Art Fair. Her exhibition at White Columns in New York in 2021 was named one of the best gallery shows of 2021 by the New York Times. Storm has worked at Creative Growth in Oakland, California since 1995.

Alan Faulds first entered the world of art through contemporary dance, performing in various shows at Edinburgh Fringe Festival. His artistic process today combines control with spontaneity, resulting in works that are full of expressive movement. The act of making a drawing often becomes its own performance. His wide-ranging interests include the royal family, fashion, celebrity culture, nature, architecture, baroque aesthetics, glamour and horror films. His graphic works are often black and white with an element of comical darkness, characterised by intricate detail and pattern.

Alan Faulds was born in 1983 and lives and works in Midlothian, Scotland. With over 20 years of active involvement in the arts, Faulds was commissioned to create a public artwork in the form of a mural in Edinburgh in 2016. Since the pandemic, Faulds has collaborated artistically with British fashion designer Julie Verhoeven. Faulds is one of the founding members of the KMA art collective and is responsible for its name – Kiss My Artist. KMA was established in 2015 and is part of Artlink in Edinburgh, UK.

Mawuena Kattah’s artistic practice draws upon an extensive personal archive of family photographs taken in Ghana over the past two decades and more recent studio photographs of family taken in London. She brings people and patterns together in complex, vibrant compositions, adding her own flair and perspective to the colour combinations and repeat patterns of traditional Ghanian fabrics.
Through immersive installations that gather textiles, painting and ceramics together to create semi-domestic spaces, Kattah invites her audiences to share in her multi-layered experience of collectivity and kinship.

Mawuena Kattah was born in 1975 and lives and works in London, UK. Kattah has exhibited in major contemporary art galleries and museums in the UK, including group exhibitions at Laing Gallery (2022), in a touring show curated by Yinka Shonibare (2019), Aston Hall (2018), Whitechapel Gallery (2009) as well as solo exhibition at Tenderbooks (2016). Her work has been acquired by institutions such as the Victoria & Albert Museum and Arts Council England’s National Collection. Since 2007, Kattah has been a member of Peckham based collective Intoart.

Mattias Johansson’s extensive artistic practice primarily consists of drawings, paintings and ceramics. When he started to work with art over 20 years ago, Johansson combined drawn images with text. His drawings often featured celebrities, politicians or people from his everyday life. Today, Johansson works mostly with large-scale abstract paintings, where he covers the paper or canvas with powerful sweeping, repetitive movements in various colour combinations. His working process can be seen as a form of choreography, where patterns and shapes are repeated, and the physical boundaries of surfaces are challenged. He always has a copy of Dagens Nyheter with him to the studio, and is still today inspired by current affairs, politics, film, TV and music.

Mattias Johansson was born in 1979 and lives and works in Stockholm. He has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including venues in Japan, Australia and New York. Here in Sweden, he has participated in exhibitions at Kulturcentrum Ronneby Konsthall and Kulturhuset in Stockholm. His work has been collected by Ronneby Municipality and Trinkhall Museum in Belgium. Johansson has worked as an artist at Inuti in Stockholm since 2003.

David Cheung has a background in game design and world-building, which has strongly influenced his way of experiencing the inner workings of the world around him. In the last few years Cheung has worked mostly with meticulously detailed drawings on paper, where he has gathered inspiration from fantasy worlds, cities and animals. Through his work he aims to create powerful experiences with a hint of humour, introducing the viewer to new and unique environments. Cheung believes in the importance of letting art speak for itself; he wants the viewer to feel captivated by the work and search for their own messages and meanings in his drawings.

David Cheung was born in 1983 in Slagelse, Danmark, and lives and works in Malmö. He has previously participated in exhibitions at Hässleholms Kulturhus, A-konst Gallery, Galleri Ur and most recently at Inuti Gallery in Stockholm, 2024. He is a member of Studio Syd (working title) in Malmö, a new studio collective established by Malmö Konsthall in 2025.