ARTIST RESIDENCIES
Messums Creative supports research residencies with dedicated studios and four on-site accommodation rooms available at Messums East. Ideas created during residencies feed into wider programming and are part of our outreach, engagement, and community-led projects.
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Subject to availability - space for visiting artists, reserachers and those involved in creative practice or thinking can also apply to stay for short-term lets and be part of the Messums East community. Stays will be offered through approved bookings, opening soon.
2026
Full Circle International Residency Award
The Full Circle International Residency Award aims to support mid-career Australian artists through a unique residency, research, and exhibition opportunity.​ The initiative is presented through a partnership between Orange Regional Gallery, Australia, and Messums Creative in the UK.
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Each year, one mid-career artist working in Australia will be selected to participate in a fully funded six week residency in the UK based across two locations: Messums East and Messums West. The Award includes an exhibition at Orange Regional Gallery the following year.
2025
KAORI KATO
In December 2025, Japanese contemporary artist Kaori Kato came to Lowestoft for a residency, delivering six free workshops over five days for local residents, schools, East Coast College and a public drop in session, with over 145 participants exploring the art of origami and paper folding. Her work was exhibited at Messums West in Wiltshire from 6 December 2025 to 12 January 2026 and will feature in a presentation at Messums East in 2027.
2025
SAMMY HAWKER
In partnership with the Corridor Project a not-for-profit Australian multidisciplinary arts and cultural organisation, Messums Creative supported photographer Sammy Hawker through a UK based residency.
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Her research and work explore near and long term changes to landscape and environment, anthropocentric living, migration choices and the resonances of the past.
The printed publication/ film/digital media artwork created will be shown and stored in the “library” at Lowestoft, forming a foundation brick in the knowledge and research into the area and the community.
2025
JELLY GREEN
Jelly Green (b.1992) is a contemporary British-New Zealand painter whose work is defined by her passion for the natural world. In March 2025, she spent three weeks in residency at The Corridor Project, Wyangala, NSW, Australia.
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Her most recent work focuses on the wildfires that threaten many of The Earth’s forests: communicating through paint the savage, elemental forces unleashed when fire takes hold.​ Green's residency at The Corridor Project inspired a new body of large-scale works which she is currently developing from her studio.
2024
TYGA HELME
In March 2024 Tyga Helme took up residence at The Corridor Project, Wayangala, NSW, Australia.
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During this residency she developed a body of direct, intuitive, and site-responsive observations of Wiradjuri Country, producing a series of rapidly drawn gouache paintings. These works now form the foundation for her solo show at Messums West in 2026.
With an attuned sensitivity to feeling and place, Tyga took advantage of the new and unfamiliar landscape to respond, with painterly curiosity, to the atmospheric transitions of light, sound, and colour; transitioning from a Northern to a Southern Hemisphere palette.
2022
JULIA LOHMANN
Julia Lohmann spent her residency based at Messums Studios in Wiltshire creating a seaweed sculpture installation that was the centrepiece of our Tideline exhibition. As part of the residency, she delivered a free seaweed workshop, teaching children and adults from the local community how to make a seaweed brooch to take home.
Julia Lohmann investigates and critiques the ethical and material value systems underpinning our relationship with flora and fauna. She is Professor of Practice in Contemporary Design at Aalto University, Helsinki, where she also lives.
2021
SONIA LEBER & DAVID CHESWORTH
What Listening Knows was a 3-channel audio and video installation by Australian artists Sonia Leber & David Chesworth, commissioned for our second Moving Image exhibition at Messums West. The research and filming were undertaken here in Wiltshire in the Summer of 2019, when Sonia and David were Messums’ first artists-in-residence. The resulting video installation was a free to access project for the local community.
