RANDY – exhibition

RANDY is a new duo show by MA Fine Art alumni George Storm Fletcher and Connor Shields at Serf Studios in Leeds.

RANDY brings together the works of George Storm Fletcher and Connor Shields, exploring intersecting moments within their practices and lives.

Both of their work has an important relationship to materials, and distinctly references physical labour. George and Connor marry together their approaches to making, transforming everyday, trade-associated materials with reference to a shared queer experience.

While studying together, George and Connor recognised common tropes within their works, often joking when their work was shown side by side that it was ‘another duo show.’ When working on RANDY, they realised that both of their parents are named Richard and Mandy. The show title therefore becomes a cheeky merging of these names.

RANDY is a collaboration and exploration of where these moments in their lives and practices cross paths.

TRACES V1, Project Space, University of Leeds, March 2023. Left: Connor Shields with '(Working title) ‘space between’; (right) George Storm Fletcher with 'FEEL'.

About the artists

George Storm Fletcher

George Storm Fletcher is a Menace, who works performatively with found objects to reappropriate inherited cultural ephemera. They have been living, and loving working in Leeds since 2018. Their background as a painter and decorator lends the work a DIY, impulsive aesthetic, and the pieces often manifest as emulsion-based paintings onto dustsheets, or as site specific-interventions into space.

They intentionally intersect and disrupt the spaces they are exhibited within. The images used are every day, and ‘pop,’ and this relatability or omnipotence (cars, florists, roads, sockets, parents) allows their work to take on a world building form.

They enjoy using traditional modes; like photogravure etching and the road movie. But they also rework old objects in new ways, for example with electrics. Their practice is not about making space, it's about vandalising it.

They are the 2025 Amanda Burton Scholar in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, currently pursuing a practice-based PhD project revolving around the infamous off-white colour ‘Magnolia’

George is based at Serf in Leeds.

Connor Shields

Connor Shields’ work is an enquiry into nature of maleness through the use of dichotomous materials such as steel, knitted wool and fabrics. These materials act as signifiers of traditional binary associations with gender and working class industries.

Originating from Middlesbrough and graduating from the Fine Art Masters programme at the University of Leeds in 2023, Shields draws on his Northern heritage and fuses it with timely concerns of male identity. He does so in a way that avoids common tropes of gender political art; favouring ambiguity over prescription. Defying assumptions of strength and vulnerability and possessing a sense of sensitivity and lyricism, his work invites meditative contemplation.

Shields is based at Assembly House Studios in Armley.

 

Venue

Serf Studios
23—25 Wharf Street
Leeds LS2 7EQ

Serf CIC is an artist-led community and project space in Leeds, UK. We provide open-plan studios and workspaces for over 25 artists and opportunities to curate exhibitions, showcase work and experiment within our project space.

Established in July 2016, Serf was founded by a group of artists and friends who required studio space but also a desire for creating an open, inclusive and communal space to make work, encourage peer to peer learning and provide opportunities for early-career artists.

Serf is run by voluntary committee members made up of studio holders.

Opening times

Opening night: Friday 18 September, 6-9pm

Sunday 20 September, 12-4pm
Saturday 26 September, 12-4pm
Sunday 27 September, 12-4pm

Open by appointment 21 to 25 September.

Feature image

Detail from RANDY poster. Design George Storm Fletcher and Connor Shields.