Preview: Fri 5 Sept, 6 pm – 8 pm
New work by Will Belshah & artist collaborators: Alana Lake, Ben Goring, Jaymus, and Jennie Franklin.
Recoverist = Recovery + Activist
These four large-scale co-produced paintings emerged from a series of workshops led by lead artist Will Belshah and hosted at the newly opened Arches space at HOME. The works are not only collaborative they are also a convergence of the five artists’ personal histories, artistic inquiry, and radical vulnerability.
The exhibition explores the tangled terrain where neurodivergence, substance use (prescribed or illicit), and artistic practice can intersect. It is a meditation on how lived experience informs creativity — from queerness to the ways different bodies move through space, to the role of art as a site of connection, recovery, and unfiltered reflection. The contributing artists approached their process without prescription or polish. What unfolds is a raw, unguarded spectrum of expression where creativity becomes a method of survival, and collaboration becomes community. Here, Recovery is not an endpoint but a practice: one of listening, making, and being together. A project initiated by Portraits of Recovery and delivered in partnership with HOME and Venture Arts.
Venture Arts is an award-winning visual arts organisation working with learning disabled artists. Through our studio programmes, exhibitions and collaborative projects, we remove barriers to the arts, we put artists in the lead, we champion neurodiversity and provide pathways for every individual to develop their creative identity.
An event for Portraits of Recovery’s Recoverist Month: Sept 2025 – placing lived experience at the heart of an annual, month-long arts programme that rewrites narratives on substance use and recovery.
Artist statement: Will Belshah
Why do we make things together?
Sometimes the world tries to force us into boxes - act this way, talk like that, follow the script. But some of us just don’t fit, and that’s okay and natural. We’re all different – in our bodies, minds and feelings. It’s in that difference that we find creativity, not chaos. But we don’t often get space to just be.
Art gives us that space. No wrong answers. No pressure to explain yourself. Just a chance to be real, be present, and connect – not through perfect words, but through doing something side by side.
This project isn’t just about the finished paintings. It’s about what happens between us – the laughs, the stories, the quiet focus, the shared breath. These are artefacts of those moments. They tell a story about what it means to be human – together.
Find out more about Will Belshah here
Contributing artists:
Alana Lake founded the award-winning project space ‘Gravity Seeks Love’ in Berlin, primarily supporting queer practitioners and female-identifying curators. Alana’s PhD research, ‘Towards a Pathology of Desire’, examines addiction through glass, ceramic, and expanded drawing, exploring its biological and psychological dimensions:
Find out more about Alana Lake here
Ben Goring makes large-scale clay images informed by rich fluidity and movement. In 2023, Ben was invited for a residency at Grizedale Arts and exhibited at Smolensky Gallery Manchester and Manchester Contemporary Art Fair, where Ben’s work was selected for Manchester Art Gallery’s permanent collection.
Find out more about Ben Goring here
Jaymus is an artist from Longsight, an inner-city area of Manchester, and that grit and spirit come through in everything he does. Growing up in the rave scene, he struggled with substances for years – but he now channels that intensity into his art. Living with bipolar disorder, creating isn’t just something he does – it’s how he stays grounded:
Find out more about Jaymus here
Jennie Franklin produces detailed drawings in pencil and pen like an energetic stream of consciousness. She picks and chooses imagery and text from various sources, which she combines to create her own intuitive compositions, in particular tv programmes and cartoon characters.
Find out more about Jennie Franklin here
Listen to the projects’ artists talking about their collaborative practise:
