WIGWELL LODGE RESIDENCIES

Wigwell Lodge is a property in Derbyshire, owned by The Ampersand Foundation since 2018. Situated in the countryside thirty minutes from Derby, the Lodge is conceived as a residence space to host artists, curators, academics and writer to reflect and work. Wigwell Lodge provides accommodation and living expenses to the person in residence giving them an opportunity to explore and discover the Midlands cultural and natural heritage.

Our current resident artist is Gail Mahon, hosted in a collaboration with Void Art Centre.

Gail Mahon is an ecosomatic artist and practice-based PhD researcher at Ulster University, based near Derry City, working across ceramics, movement, and biological arts. Her practice positions the body as a responsive ecological site, exploring plasticity and porosity through interactions with bone mineralogy, clay, and environmental systems as interrelated material-culture languages. Through installation, image-making, and socially engaged processes, Mahon investigates the entanglement of climate, landscape, and embodied experience. Her work unfolds through collaborative and site-responsive methodologies, including immersive workshops that prioritise proprioceptive readings of landscape as modes of trust, risk, care, and sensory exchange.

During this residency, Gail will expand on her creative autoethnographic study to explore human–forest relations; mapping interconnections to walking, clay, soils, and bone minerals, creating somatic sculptures and experimental, movement-based artefacts. Gail will extend her research from Irish Mesolithic sites at Mount Sandel in Northern Ireland to British sites at York, including Star Carr, and engage with interdisciplinary arts and health sciences at Loughborough University, weaving together fieldwork, creative reflection, and embodied practice.

RESIDENCY PARTNERS & PREVIOUS RESIDENT ARTISTS

Ikon Gallery - artist residency

In 2025 we partnership with the Ikon Gallery, a renowned arts gallery in Birmingham founded in 1964, to hold a residency for Singaporean artist Robert Renhui Zhao. Zhao is a multidisciplinary artist whose used his residency to continue his practice of examining the relationship between humans and nature.

The Photographers’ Gallery - artist residency

In 2026 we partnership with the The Photographers’ Gallery to hold a residency for artist, technologist and researcher Felix Loftus. For the residency, Felix looked into the histories of industrialisation, making and technological resistance local to the Lodge, while prototyping creative methods for re-using smart-phones using a permacomputing approach. His prototyping focused on building solar-powered, automated, landscape cameras and nature cams, with his notes, documentation and works-in-progress shared via The Photographers’ Gallery’s online resource Unthinking Photography.

Association for Art History (AAH) - art historian residency

We partner annually with the AAH to create an art history residency for researchers and academics. The residency is intended to give researchers, at all stages of their career, the opportunity to spend focused time on their research/writing while on sabbatical. The residencies are available to AAH members and run between October to January each year.

Previous residents:
Dr Victoria Horne, Northumbria University (2025)
Dr Robert Mills, University College London (2024) Susannah Thompson, The Glasgow School of Art (2023)
Dr. Patricya Smith (2022) Prof. James Hellings, University of Reading (2021) Mark Rawlinson, Associate Professor in Art History, University of Nottingham (2019)

Wirksworth Festival - artist residency

From 2019 to 2025 we partnered with the Wirksworth Festival, a regional arts festival in Derbyshire that has been running for over twenty years, for an annual artist residency. Selecting an artist to reside at Wigwell Lodge for three months in the summer, this artist would produce work a body of work for the festival.

Previous residents: Ellen Burroughs (2025) https://ellenburroughs.wordpress.com/
Stef Kerek (2024) https://skerekceramics.wordpress.com/ Mustafa Boga (2023) https://www.mustafaboga.com/ Feral Practice (2023) http://www.feralpractice.com/ Jemma Gunning (2022) https://www.jemmagunning.com/ Liane Lang (2021) https://www.lianelang.com/ Mike Shaw (2019) https://michaelshaw.art/

Photoworks - lens-based artist residency

From 2020-24 we partnered with Photoworks to offer a residency opportunity for lens-based artists, running each year from February to June. Arts institutions from across the Midlands came together to nominate the candidates. Photoworks is a platform for contemporary photography working nationally and internationally. www.photoworks.org.uk

Previous residents: Matthew Arthur Williams (2024) https://www.matthewarthurwilliams.com/work Charlie Fitz (2023) https://www.charliefitzartist.co.uk/ Monica Alcazar-Duarte (2021) https://www.monicaalcazarduarte.com/ Freddy Griffiths (2020) http://www.freddygriffiths.co.uk/

Please contact each organisation to find out more about how to apply.