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

Using Format