Jess Hargreaves is from Great Harwood in Lancashire, completing a Foundation year in Art and Design at UCLan then going on to compete her BA Hons in Fine Art at York St John. Currently finishing an MFA in Fine art and York St John University, alongside an Artist Residency at Bootham School in York. As a Resident Artist at Bootham School in the centre of York she provides support in tutoring GCSE and A Level art students whilst also providing workshops in many disciplines to help provide a wider accessibility in visual arts. Jess Hargreaves is a multidisciplinary artist who navigates text as a medium within collage forms and exploring mark-making through text. Collecting text as a found object then transplanting it into textiles, printmaking and collage. Over time this has developed into her own writing, poetry based, in which she then uses methodologies of deconstruction/reconstruction to create compositions evoking an interruptive practice. She aims to interrogate Cixous' ideas of 'writing of and for oneself.' and what that looks like in contemporary society, where gender and identity are constantly changing and evolving. Synthesising this perspective with introspective and everyday narratives, rooted in lived experiences in and around Lancashire including its identifying dialect and slang. Themes of working class raised female perspectives functioning as personal protest as her work culminates in the quiet beauty that female rage can be.
