CONTACT
Wes Foster is a practitioner based in Leeds, UK. His image making is focused on the relationship between text and image, communities and social space and culture.
He has extensive experience in music photography and low light portraiture, as well as broader editorial photography.
His writing has been published in numerous places both in print and online, and focuses on collaborative relationships and culture.
ABOUT
His personal work is heavily influenced by ideas surrounding class, social space and town planning. It focuses especially on community, development and the aesthetics of the ordinary.
He is one of the co-founding members of Freehold Projects in Leeds, an accessible gallery space catering for emerging artists. He is also one of the founding members of Working Class Creatives Database, which pushes to create a community which can support working class practitioners in the arts.
As a freelance writer he has written extensively about the arts, photography and music. He is an editor at Then There Was Us, and an editor at Pupil Sphere. He has worked with magazines such as The Skinny, God Is In The TV, and NowThen Manchester amongst others. He has photographed bands including the likes of Sleaford Mods, Suede and Savages.
EXHIBTIONS / BOOKS / (SELECTED) WRITINGS:
Hull is Full; 2015
Affect & Effect; Blackjack Tavern, Manchester; 2016
Reply All; Grosvenor Gallery, Manchester; 2016
Sans Accent // Ses Sotaque; 2016
Proximity; 2016
Between the Mersey and the M60; 2017
At the Edge of the [North] East; 2017
Pilot; Manchester School of Art; 2017
Greater Manchester Arts Prize (Shortlisted); 2017
Reply All; Despina; Rio De Janeiro; 2017
You Made It (MSoA Degree Show); The Holden Gallery, Manchester; 2017
The Post-Silver; Hoxton Arches, London; 2017
Pingyao International Photography Festival; Pingyao; 2017
An Industrial North; 2017
Appleby’s; Manchester; 2017/8
Nanjing University of the Arts; Nanjing; 2018
Kirkstall Art Trail; Leeds; 2018
Back Axle Casing; 2018
Waterside Arts Centre, Sale; 2018/9
Mabgate Annual; Leeds; 2019
D R I F T; 2019
Showing Up (w. Freehold Projects); Serf, Leeds; 2020
35 Ways to Say Wet in Scottish; 2020
Along the Tops of Dry Bracken; 2020
Contested Territories; Then There Was Us; 2020
Forma Non Herus; 2020
The Far Away Utopia of the Labour Camp; Then There Was Us; 2020
Enacting the Past from Clouded Viewpoints; Pupil Sphere; 2020
Making Work; Photograd; 2020
Living to the Last Penny; short story, Creeping Expansion; 2020
Making Space; Photograd; 2020
Close But Far; 2020
Nothing Without Labour; Forme Journal; 2020
Home & Migration; Then There Was Us; 2020
The Family Issue; Then There Was Us; 2021
Of Dark Matter (foreword) Robert Eaton; Ceremony Press; 2021
Patchwork Paint Work w. Alice Chandler; Unreal Estates; 2021
Skudde (foreword) Kat Wood; Ceremony Press; 2022