Zhana Viel is an artist who spent her youth exploring nature and freely discovering the great outdoors. As a teenager, she studied photography and design with the American photographer Giovanni who catalyzed her outgoing passion for art making. She has numerous private collections in the UK, Europe, the United States and Australia. Viel's artworks have been used on the covers of books, CD albums and Vernon Proms Classical music festival visuals. At the present moment, she lives in London, UK. where she studies Psychology and uses art therapy techniques to create some of her most beautiful, expressive and thrilling visual art.

Bankside Hotel x Contemporary Collective are thrilled to welcome Birmingham based artist Imogen Morris to the Art Yard Gallery as their next Artist in Residence. Influenced by the traditional craft of hand embroidery, Imogen creates portraits using nail & thread. During her residency, Imogen will create a series of portraits using her signature technique that portrays a sense of movement and energy in the subjects to reflect the fast-paced atmosphere of the Bankside Hotel and community, located in the heart of London.

With the goal of developing her work into more of a 3D space, Imogen plans to create 14 portraiture works of subjects who are guests, visitors and local community members of the hotel that will create a sense of movement and pace in each portrait. Throughout this process, Imogen will approach, engage with, and photograph subjects to obtain a series of photographed portraits that will be used as a base for her original, nail and thread artworks.

Read the press release here