Meet artist Tyga Helme in her studio on the Wiltshire Downs. Trained at Edinburgh College of Art and The Royal Drawing School in London, where she won the Machin Foundation Prize, Tyga uses nature as a metaphor for feelings of being overwhelmed. She couples minute observation of the teeming forest floor – where the emerald green of a bramble leaf sits in stark juxtaposition to an array of cold blue silver leaves – with the flux and movement of unceasing growth. A rising star in the new British Landscape movement her works embodies an awakening to the importance of the ground beneath our feet. Although Tyga lives and works in the UK she won an Erasmus scholarship to study at the L’Ecole Nationale Superieue des Arts Decoratifs in Strasbourg and for more than a year taught at the International Institute for Arts, Modinagar in India. Her work is held in held in a number of important collections including the Royal Collection.

Kennedy Junior Muntanga is a movement artist born in Ndola, Zambia where he resided until he was 7. The importance of dance was already embedded in him through his African heritage, which he began to study from the age of 12. Kennedy furthered his training and graduated in Ballet and Contemporary Dance at the Rambert School in July 2019. Kennedy is the Artistic Director of Kennedy Muntanga Dance Theatre, a new company based in London whose mission is to create work that represents many cultures, life experiences and stories. Kennedy presented his piece 'Greater than Lion' at Messums Wiltshire's Festival of Dance in September 2021.

Antony Williams works almost exclusively in egg tempera – a painstaking, exacting medium in which egg is used instead of linseed oil as the binding medium. While oil allows for a degree of flexibility and manipulation of the painted surface before it dries, many days after initial application, this technique does not easily allow for alteration. All his work is based on intense observation, particularly of human flesh, creating as a result a heightened sense of realism. Antony trained at Farnham College of Art and Portsmouth University and is a member of the New English Art Club, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the Pastel Society.

Tuesday Riddell was one of the very first on our emerging talents programme. Tuesday studied at the Painter-Stainers Decorative Surface Fellowship at City & Guilds of London Art School – the only Fellowship in the UK that provides specialist training in the craft of decorative surface techniques to ensure that endangered skills are kept alive and vibrant in contemporary practice. ‘Making Introductions’ is a series of five films produced in partnership with our artists and focuses on the techniques that stand at the core of their respective studio processes. All of these short classes can be followed at home and will be released throughout the Christmas holidays. In one fifteen-minute video we hope you will learn a little about one of our artists and a lot about their process. Every masterpiece starts with a sketch, every journey with a step. It is often forgotten that art is as much a language as speaking. “Making Introductions” is about learning these different ways of communicating and being able to take part in the conversation.

'Making Introductions' is produced in partnership with our artists and focuses on the techniques that stand at the core of their respective studio processes. All of these short classes can be followed at home and will be released throughout the Christmas holidays. In one fifteen-minute video we hope you will learn a little about one of our artists and a lot about their process. Every masterpiece starts with a sketch, every journey with a step. It is often forgotten that art is as much a language as speaking. “Making Introductions” is about learning these different ways of communicating and being able to take part in the conversation.

'Making Introductions' is produced in partnership with our artists and focuses on the techniques that stand at the core of their respective studio processes. All of these short classes can be followed at home and will be released throughout the Christmas holidays. In one fifteen-minute video we hope you will learn a little about one of our artists and a lot about their process. Every masterpiece starts with a sketch, every journey with a step. It is often forgotten that art is as much a language as speaking. “Making Introductions” is about learning these different ways of communicating and being able to take part in the conversation. We began working with Francesco Poiana in 2019 with his debut show following a residency at Messums Wiltshire as part of our emerging talents programme. Francesco trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome before studying fine art printing at the Albicocca workshop in Udine and then taking his masters degree at St Martin’s College of Art in London. He now attends the Royal Drawing School. We are currently working towards an online exhibition of his recent work.

In February 2023, ceramic artist Thiébaut Chagué began an artist’s residency at Messums Wiltshire. The project was to build a 10ft high sculpture in clay that would be fired in a 5 metre high woodfired kiln as a live spectacle. The project was completed in March 2023 despite high winds and heavy rain. In this interview Thiébaut discusses the project ahead of the firing.

Tom Waugh makes sculptures from stone and marble that depict discarded, mass-produced objects. Plastic bags, cardboard boxes, and tin cans are squashed, crushed, and wrinkled, documenting the casual imprints of human use. Using the processes and techniques of classical marble carving, and paying close attention to form and surface detail, he achieves a high level of realism in his work. Some of the sculptures are life-size, others are larger than life, and some appear, like fossils, emerging from the pristine rock. Materials are carefully chosen to achieve realism: white marble takes on the appearance of plastic or polystyrene, ironstone becomes rusty metal and Portland Stone is transformed into crumpled cardboard, rendering solid, immutable marble and limestone into the light malleable forms of discarded objects. Despite the use of traditional materials and techniques, his work has tensions and contradictions: between classical and contemporary art; between temporality and permanence; and between humour and serious environmental and social issues.

A key figure in British ceramics, Martin Smith is an artist who approaches clay with the mindset of an architect. He studied at Bristol Polytechnic Faculty of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art, emerging in the midst of the new ceramics movement in the late 1970s and becoming known for his multi-disciplinary approach to design and practice. Smith is a Professor Emeritus at the Royal College of Art having been Professor of Ceramics and Glass at the school for 16 years. Smith has an exhibition at Messums London opening on Wednesday 15 February 2023.

Season 3: Episode 1 Release date: Wednesday 4 January 2023 Jack McGarrity trained at the Glasgow School of Art, close to where he grew up in the West of Scotland, before moving to London to study at the Royal Drawing School. He creates new narratives that explore notions of the absurd, stillness and alienation in the modern world. His work relates to the great tradition of narrative painting while is also located within the revival of figurative painting in contemporary practice. McGarrity, who originally exhibited as part of our Emerging Talents programme, has a solo exhibition at Messums London in January 2023. ‘Making Introductions’ is a series of films produced in partnership with our artists and focuses on the techniques that stand at the core of their respective studio practices. In a short film we hope you will learn a little about our artists and a lot about their process.

Polly Penrose has been taking self-portraits on a ten-second timer and more recently a remote for nearly 20 years. Her work is unpremeditated and spontaneous and records her responding to her environment. She explores identity and the opposed notions of vulnerability and empowerment, comedy and tragedy. Her pictures focus less on sexuality and female allure, but retain the awkward, often beguiling force of the body as an object, pushed into a space, forced into a position whilst feigning a sense of normality and control.

Jean-Vincent Simonet (b. 1991) graduated from École cantonale d’art de Lausanne in 2014. His practice fuses analogue images, digital techniques, collage, montage, sculpture and painting with remarkable fluidity. His practice pushes the poetics of chaos to the very limits of the photographic medium.

Photographer Yan Wang Preston (b. 1976, Henan Province, China) has created numerous acclaimed series which explore the mercurial relationship between people and place. Wang Preston’s combined interest in photography and mountain climbing have had a transformative impact upon her practice; initially inspired by climber and photojournalist Galen Rowell, she has become known for her adventurous photographic projects which encompass a variety of physical and conceptual terrain.