In partnership with FACT Liverpool (UK), Platform Asia (UK), and Videotage (Hong Kong), Broadway's Near Now are working with six international emerging artists from the Midlands, North East England, and Hong Kong for a new hybrid residency programme in Summer/Autumn 2024.

The residency offers these artists an opportunity to explore the potential of new screen technologies and expand their ideas of screen culture and non-linear storytelling. Through a combination of online workshops and a 12-day in-person programme across the UK, we will provide mentoring and production guidance, enabling the artists to experiment and bring their visions to life. Work-in-progress presentations will be held in October–November 2024 with FACT, Broadway, Dreamy Place 2024 (Brighton), and Videotage in Hong Kong.

This ambitious residency connects creative spaces nationally, internationally, and online as part of Platform Asia's Sudden Beams 3 programme. It has been produced in collaboration with FACT, Broadway's Near Now, Videotage and Platform Asia, with support from Arts Council England and the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

Khush Kali works across image-making, digital technologies, textiles, performance-for-video, and collage-as-remix, exploring identity, cultural heritage, personal history, and the urban environment. Her work is deeply influenced by late 90s underground club culture and Leicester’s urban and social history. Recent projects and exhibitions have incorporated AI-generated images, augmented reality, remote collaboration, sound art, and her initial forays into the basics of live coding.

Khush is dedicated to making art inclusive and accessible to all. She facilitates participant-led workshops for children, young people, and elders in community settings across Leicester, as well as at arts venues such as Attenborough Arts, Leicester Museum, and Southbank Centre, London. She serves as an independent member of Leicester Visual Arts Network, where she advocates for meaningful outreach and community engagement with local audiences. Additionally, Khush is a member of the Gallery Advisory Panel for Two Queens Gallery, Leicester, and mentors early- and mid-career artists in developing their own community engagement activities. She is also a visiting lecturer on the Fine Art BA at De Montfort University and the Museum Studies MA at the University of Leicester. Khush has exhibited in the UK, USA, and India, and her work is held in the public collection of The City of Leicester Museums Trust. She was nominated and shortlisted for acquisition by the Government Art Collection’s Art X-UK 2022-2023 programme.

khush-kali.co.uk

Seema Mattu is a Valmiki world-building trickster, whose multi-channel practice is framed as a theme park—known as SEEMAWORLD. This playful rollercoaster of intersecting experiences invites visitors to navigate a fantastical framework woven from the complexities of Seema’s multifaceted identity.

With a focus on speculative storytelling rooted in British South Asian culture and her home city of Birmingham (UK), SEEMAWORLD fuses CGI (computer-generated imagery) and real-world environment-building, 3D character creation, mixed-media animation, folk-punk sound design, and visual spectacle. Seema’s work explores systems of caste, queer desire, fan labour, and gender biases within digital landscapes. Her work has been featured in exhibitions and commissions with organisations such as Berwick Film and Media Festival, IKON Gallery, Eastside Projects, New Art City, Blindspot Gallery, and QUAD. In April 2022, she completed Film London’s FLAMIN Fellowship and, in March 2023, a year-long residency with Wysing Arts Centre. In December 2021, Seema became a QUAD International Digital Fellow, which led to her first major solo show in September 2023. She is currently pursuing an MA in Animation at the Royal College of Art (2023-24).

seemaworld.com

Janhavi Sharma is an independent artist from India, currently based in Nottingham, United Kingdom. Her work explores the intersections of memory, food, gender, and ecology. She is particularly drawn to the inaccuracies in folkloric storytelling structures and uses performative fiction to recreate narratives that reflect her evolving sense of self in relation to her surroundings. Janhavi often employs food as a dynamic metaphor to stage personal, anatomical, and systemic inquiries within her practice. Working primarily with photography and film, she engages with the conceptual possibilities of digital media to remember, misremember, and even forget information. Her practice also incorporates sculptural and installation-based methods to challenge conventional ways of consuming digital media. Janhavi consciously traces the ecological and socio-political trajectories of the materials and processes she engages with.

janhavisharma.com

Elle Bulger is a visual artist from Salford, whose practice focuses on world-building and designing experiences rather than traditional art forms. They aim to enable people to see things from perspectives otherwise hidden to them by placing them in control of their own experiences. Elle believes that the interactive nature of games helps bridge the gap between art and audience, creating a space open to dialogues informed by empathy.

By viewing the art world from the perspective of others in their city, Elle has always sought to create work that encourages engagement from anyone who chooses to experience it, regardless of their background. With experience in VR and AR development, they utilise skills learned during their time in the tech industry, as well as methods they have explored independently, to shape and develop their practice. The use of new technologies is a cornerstone of their work, and they hope to continue evolving alongside technological advancements.

ellebulger.itch.io

Born in 1994, Kaman Lam lives and works in Hong Kong. She is currently an art worker and co-founder of the artist collective PoPo-Post Art Group. Kaman explores the use of materials and the possibilities of graphics. In addition to her artistic pursuits, she has recently developed a strong interest in video games.

kamanlam.wixsite.com/kaman

Wong Chun Kit, also known as Louis Wong, was born in 1996 in Hong Kong and received his Bachelor of Arts from the Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University in 2018. Louis is the co-founder of PoPo-Post Art Group. His artworks are inspired by observations of daily life, focusing on the relationship between art and life, society, and art. In recent years, Louis has concentrated on creating “Issue-Based Art,” examining the intersections of social, political, and cultural themes.

instagram.com/pppostartists

We're happy to be working with Sudden Beams again, following our previous exhibition collaboration in 2023. Sudden Beams is a platform that supports and promotes South Asian artists working with sound and digital media in the UK and internationally. Curated and produced by Platform Asia.

Banner image: Irreconcilable Differences (2024), official film still, by Seema Mattu