The Black Dogs (Andy Abbott, Dan Carey, Dave Ronalds, Lawrence Molloy and Jon Slight) formed in Leeds in 2003 and have recently been joined by Eleanor Johnson. The group offers mutual support for members’ practice and aims to promote alternative approaches to artist engagement in Leeds and to initiate projects in both the public realm and formal exhibition spaces. Their first group show ’Arte et Labore’ took place in May 2004 and they are now pursuing individual and group projects for Situation Leeds. These will be drawn together in the first Black Dogs Almanac, a self-published venture to be launched coincidentally with the festival in May 2005.

Amelia Crouch graduated from the University of Leeds with a first class honours degree in 2003, having spent her penultimate year studying at the University of California, Irvine. She was part of the artist-led group which delivered EmergeD’s [Shift] project in the Merrion Centre Superstone in 2004 and has recently taken part in screenings at the Taxi Gallery, Cambridge and Catalyst Arts, Belfast. She is based in Morley in Leeds.

Pippa Hale recently worked as Artist in Residence at East Street Arts’ new development Patrick Studios in 2003-04. The residency culminated in a series of site-specific installations which relocated elements of the former Irish social club into the refurbished interior, the most dramatic of which was a theatrical stage recreated to size, scale and site. Hale is currently working with Canon David Hawkins and communications strategist Stuart Tarbuck on a collaborative project, Mene Mene for Situation Leeds. She co-director of Vitrine with Kerry Harker and secretary of Leeds Visual Arts Forum.

Kerry Harker is co-director of Vitrine with Pippa Hale and also a Fine Art graduate of the University of Leeds. She was an Artist in Residence in 2003 as part of the new biennial Vickers Award, resulting in her solo show ‘Miniature Masterpieces of Delicacy, Humour and Colour’ at Derby Museum and Art Gallery. She has also exhibited in ‘New Contemporaries’ (1994-95) at Camden Arts Centre and touring and in ‘Collect’ at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (2005). She was shortlisted for the Comme Ca Art Prize North in 2004 and is working towards a group show at the Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh in May.

Simon Lewandowski is based in London and lectures in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds. He has shown widely over the past 15 years, most recently in ‘There is No Promised Land, Stay Where You Are’ at the Rachael Haverkamp Gallery, Cologne and in ‘Cyclic Eye’ at the Museu Paulista, Sao Paolo, Brazil (both 2004). He has taken part in symposia, projects and commissions as far apart as India, Sweden and the US, and has undertaken residences at Grizedale Arts (1999) and the Imperial War Museum (2001-02).

Amy Wilson graduated with a BA(Hons) in Fine Art (Environmental) from Glasgow School of Art in 2002. She is now based in Scholes near Leeds and is a committee member of Monitor, a recently-formed artist-led group in the city that came together as a result of working on EmergeD’s [Shift] project in the Merrion Centre Superstore in 2004. Monitor aims to generate more opportunities for emerging artists in Leeds and to encourage graduate retention. Wilson is also working towards a solo project ‘Re-mains’ for Situation Leeds.

WalkerHill Michael Walker (MA, Royal College of Art 1995) and Martyn Hill (MA Chelsea College of Art 1993) have been collaborating as WalkerHill since 1999 and are based in Leeds. Their artists position, which they characterise as ‘no ideals, no absolutes; provisional, not temporary; precise but not specific’ relies on the confrontation between scientific precision and human variation. WalkerHill have exhibited widely in the UK and Europe including ‘Index on Colour 2’ in collaboration with Yukio Shiraishi at Leeds City Art Gallery in 2004 and ‘Abstraction Now’ at the Kuntslerhaus, Vienna in 2003.