Making Thoughts: Academic Study and Developing your Art Practice
Associates Event
Making Thoughts: Academic Study and Developing your Art Practice
31 March 2026
6pm - 7:30pm
Castlefield Gallery / Online
This event is for Castlefield Gallery Associates only.
It is in person at Castlefield Gallery or Online.
To book: Please follow the link in the latest Associates events mail-out.
Not an Associate yet? Join our scheme here
With Alana Lake and Deeqa Ismail
Have you been wondering what further study might do for your art practice? Join us for our March Associates session – Making Thoughts! We will be joined by artists Alana Lake and Deeqa Ismail whose exhibition Broken Ecologies will be at the gallery 15 Mar – 19 Apr 2026. The event is an opportunity to hear from them and Matthew Pendergast, our Head of Programmes, who will chair a conversation around their experiences of the relationship between academic study and making art.
Lake, Ismail and Pendergast will open the event with some helpful tips on where to start with potentially daunting subjects like art history, philosophy and critical theory. They will go on to discuss the value of research for artists wanting to explore their work in relation to the work of other artists, ideas and approaches to making. They will discuss how getting to know the wider historical, political and social context of your work can help you to engage with your peers, contribute to shared knowledge and communicate your work to audiences and galleries. Ultimately they will make the case that this knowledge can be best used to interrogate the work you make. Arguing that the discourse between theory and practice does not just help you interpret or explore the relevance of your work but also helps you to challenge it, contributing to the continued development of your art practice, both conceptually and materially.
Deeqa Ismail (b. 1988, Hargeisa, Somalia) is a Somali-British artist based in Stockport, Manchester. She works with printmaking, sound, video, and installations, often incorporating analogue processes and Somali sonic archives. Printmaking frequently acts as the starting point in her work, and her practice explores speculative ecology, memory, and the repetition of erased or hidden histories. Drawing on family archives and Somali cultures’ “stuck-ness,” Ismail reflects on the feeling of living within recurring histories and carrying them across generations.Ismail is currently pursuing a Practice-Led PhD in Fine Art at Manchester School of Art, focusing on the transformation of Somali archives into physical forms that explore time and materiality exploring sound, memory, and materiality through print, sculptural, and installation practice. Ismail completed the MA Fine Art, at Manchester School of Art (2023–2025).
Alana Lake (b. 1981, Tamworth, UK) is an artist working at the intersection of addiction, desire, and materiality. She works with glass, ceramic, and metal, drawing on material histories and inherited associations to explore compulsion, intimacy, and transformation. Lake’s research engages theories of lively and animated matter, gravitating toward materials that carry tension to consider how craving, care, and self-destructive habits take form. Her PhD, Towards a Pathology of Desire (Manchester School of Art), examines addiction not as disease but as a “biology of desire,” deeply entangled with contemporary culture. Previously Lake studied on the three-year Postgraduate Programme at the Royal Academy Schools, London, a primarily studio-focused programme which allowed her the time and space to interrogate her practice. Lake has also taught across BA and MA Fine Art programs, including as an Associate Lecturer at Manchester School of Art and guest lecturing internationally.
