Paul Colley
Paul Colley has been involved with Project Art Works for more than 15 years. He has collaborated on multiple projects and creative moments during his years in special schools and as a young adult. He has taken a central presence in a series of films made by artist Kate Adams, his mother, including a strand of her practice that evolved into the Project Art Works programme of participatory spatial surveys of built space.
Paul is highly inquisitive and aware of his surroundings. Although he doesn’t use language to communicate his communication is expansive and utilises gesture, subtle facial expression, sounds and behaviour. He thrives in the company of others and for a time worked with the Tuesday Studios group.
Paul enjoys watching live projections of the activities unfolding in the studio. When these are projected onto canvas he works in collaboration with an artist who offers choices of brush, pen and colour to place quick, decisive marks on surfaces.
The studio artists who work with Paul try to hold his attention and gain interaction through working with pictures of things that interest him like planes and the people in his life that he has a strong connection with. He has a very playful way of responding to these sessions, interacting for hours with the artist and their creative inventions and play. Very occasionally he will paint with large, gestural movements.
The Paul Colley book is a selection of playful and intimate photographic portraits presents a window into Paul’s world, where you meet the people important to him, and his creative process within and outside of the studios is revealed. It is available to buy at Untitled Gallery.
Exhibitions & Residencies
Illuminating the Wilderness, screened at MK Gallery, Tate Liverpool and Museum of Modern Art in Sydney , 2019
Putting ourselves in the Picture, Fabrica Gallery, Brighton, 2019
Coastal Currents, Project Art Works, 2019
I Hear You, Mikhail Karikas, De La Warr Pavilion, September 2019 – January 2020
Ignition, Hastings Contemporary, March – May 2021
ONCA Barge Residency, Brighton Marina, August 2021
Coastal Currents, Project Art Works studio, Hastings, 2022
Residential, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, 23 September 2023 – 25 February 2024
Residential, Copenhagen Contemporary, 27 April – 31 December 2024
