Dr Julia McKinlay

Profile

I am an artist, curator and researcher specialising in sculpture. My studio practice is based in Leeds and I curate Threshold, an outdoor space for sculpture in LS4, Leeds. Through Threshold I have worked with artists: Emii Alrai, Alice Chandler, Jacob Farrell, Jun Rui Lo, Hannah Platt, Victoria Lucas and Hang Zhang.

I joined the University of Leeds as a Lecturer in Fine Art in January 2022. Before joining FAHACS, I was a Visting Lecturer in Postgraduate Studies at Leeds Arts University (2021–22) and previously Bartlett Teaching Fellow in Print at Newcastle University (2016–2017).

I have studied sculpture at Glasgow School of Art (BA, 2009), and The Slade School of Fine Art (MFA, 2014). In 2018 I was awarded a scholarship to undertake a practice-based PhD at Leeds Beckett University in collaboration with Yorkshire Sculpture International and gained my doctorate in 2022. My thesis ‘Acid-Soaked Molluscs: a xenophoric approach to practising sculpture and print’ examined the production of three bodies of work and the subsequent evolution of a xenophoric research methodology after an encounter with a xenophora snail specimen. Xenophora are marine gastropods known for their collecting behaviour, they gather shells, stones, coral and other detritus from the sea floor and attach this material to the outside of its own shell. The methodology proposed in my thesis shadowed the marine snail xenophora’s habits as a creative process and was contextualised in relation to new materialism, and particularly the theories of Donna Haraway, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing and Jane Bennett.

I work across sculpture, printmaking and drawing. I use material processes that mimic nature, utilising chemical reactions, heat, and pressure to make installations that represent semi-fictional environments, and question the boundaries between nature and the human-made. Previous works have explored the edge of the world, an obscure garden and the back of a snail’s shell. Archival research in natural history museums as well as visits to quarries, foundries and workshops have often been the catalyst for new work. I am currently exploring abstraction, language of form, surface and scale through my process led practice.

Recent exhibitions include Constructing the Surface, Gloam Gallery, Sheffield (2025); Slip Across These Planes, Hyde Park Art Club, Leeds (2025); Surface and Form, AIR3331, Tokyo (2024); Making Poetry with Solid Objects II, Komagome SOKO, Tokyo; A Pair of Lungs with Hiroko Nakajima at Nakanojo Biennale 2023, Gunma, Japan (2023); Leeds Artists Show 2023, Leeds Art Gallery (2023); Figureheads: Members Show 2022, Bloc Projects, Sheffield (2022). Previous residencies include: Glasgow Print Studio (2024); AIR3331, Tokyo (2024); YSI Sculpture Network 2020, Leeds (2020); Mokuhanga Innovation Laboratory, Kawaguchiko (2018); METAL, Southend-on-Sea (2018); Skaftfell, Seyðisfjörður, Iceland (2015).

I am a founding member of Plant Embedded Research Network.

Research interests

My research interests include:

• contemporary sculpture
• the agency of materials and processes
• the relationship between sculpture and printmaking
• multiples and artist books
• the role of print and drawing in the development of natural history and scientific knowledge
• art/science collaborations
• artist-led ecologies
• embedded research in arts organisations

Qualifications

• PhD Fine Art (by Practice)
• MFA Fine Art
• BA Hons Fine Art: Sculpture and Environmental Art

Student education

• BA Fine Art, BA Fine Art with History of Art; BA Fine Art with Contemporary Cultural Theory
• MA Fine Art
• PhD Fine Art Practice

Current postgraduate researchers

• Hang Zhang