Debby Akam

Born in 1957

Great Britain

https://www.debbyakam.com/

date of insertion in W.A.D. 12/2024

Biography

DEBBY AKAM Balancing being a painter, participatory public artist, mother, and researcher.

1957: Born Bournemouth England
1965: Beginnings
I’ll start aged about 8 when I decided to dredge clay from a stream near our house to make bricks for a little house I wanted to make. I was in a rural part of Borneo where my father was working for the Malaysian Government. Surrounded by villages of thatched houses I always had great admiration for the handmade, the improvised and the resourceful. We returned to the UK, when I was 12, leaving pets, friends and half my heart in another place. In 1976 I signed up for a Joint honours degree in Painting and History of art at Edinburgh University. In the Medieval department I found delight in the colours and patterns of Pre Renaissance and Islamic art. Artifacts from tribal and craft traditions such as ceramics, carpets, and art that was made for architecture had a big appeal, especially the scale, collaborative nature of the process, the anonymity of the artists, and relationship to the landscapes in which they were made. However, I always gravitated to image making, particularly painting with its mysterious transformation of the world into two dimensions though the alchemy of colour and design.

1985: Participatory Public Art
After 3 years making paintings in a studio in the East End of London in the 80’s, we found we were expecting twins, and pragmatism and a sense of adventure took us to Newcastle upon Tyne where my partner was doing a research degree. Meanwhile, I continued painting and completed an MFA at Northumbria University, also working as a freelancer doing residencies and commissions linked to urban regeneration programmes. I relished the opportunity to create participatory projects, and intervene in the built environment with architectural scale mosaics made from discarded broken tiles. Many of these featured unfiltered contributions from passers- by and community groups and were an attempt to soften and humanise urban and often corporate environments with hand- made interventions. Digital imaging offered opportunities to easily combine technology with the handmade and integrate contributions from different sources and contributors. In 2004 I completed an art practice- based Doctorate from the University of Sunderland entitled ‘Digital Art and Landscape’. I explored context through moving image and video projections in site- specific artworks that were like giant moving paintings.

2012- present: Studio practice
I have continued to excavate my relationship to place and culture in urban and pastoral contexts in different parts of the world. However, the focus of my practice has increasingly shifted back to my first love: painting on canvas. I have recently had a series of solo shows, and my work has been shown in the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition in 2023 and 2025.

My paintings explore the formation of a personal visual language based on investigations of layered space created through the dynamics of colour relationships and gestural marks that result in images of ‘stilled action’. Working with colour energises and motivates me, and is a source of positive emotional response. I’m interested in the possibility of colour being a language in itself, working as a correlative for emotions: pointing to meanings without illustrating them. I often use semi – random processes such as wax- resist, printing and frottage(rubbing) as a tactic to encourage a loosening of intentional control over parts of the making process. The use of wax in certain areas also allows me to excavate the surface, and uncover hidden layers of paint, finally arriving at a balance of line, flat colour and asymmetry, that is leaning towards harmony, but never quite reaching it. This on- going dialogue with the painting reflects a process – based approach that links personal experience with wider themes of celebration, mutability and renewal. Working in this way makes space for conscious and unconscious thoughts and ideas, sometimes evoking memories of my first experiences of mark- making when I was a child in a batik workshop in Borneo, or referencing patterns and motifs from woven and printed textiles collected during recent working trips, and 4 artists’ residencies in India at Tasara Centre for the Arts, Kerala, India. The paintings are about being in the moment: going back to childhood, forward into the unknown, and making paintings where memory, experience and imagination can coalesce.

Curriculum

Education

2004 Sunderland University, art-practice based PhD. Digital Art in the Rural Environment
1989 Northumbria University, MFA
1981 Edinburgh University, MA in Fine Art

Selected exhibitions, residencies,and installations

2025 Suthra International Residency and Expo, Tasara Centre for the Arts, India
2024, 2022, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2015 Printfest Ulverston, juried exhibition
2024 Suthra International Residency and Expo, Tasara Centre for the Arts,India
2023 Northern Print, Stepney Bank, Newcastle upon Tyne One and Another
2023 Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition
2023 Farfield Mill, Sedburgh, Cumbria LA10 5LW July 5 10.30am – Thinking in Colour and Form Part 2: Debby Akam Paintings, Gary Power Tintotem Parade
2023 Suthra International Residency and Expo, Tasara Centre for the Arts, India
2022 Upfront Arts, solo show
2021 The Old Courthouse, Shap, Cumbria, Solo: Painting the Language of Colour
2020 Suthra International Residency and Expo, Tasara Centre for the Arts, India
2017 Christl C-Art: In Extraordinary Places, video installation at Old Fire Station, Penrith. With Gary Power, Phoebe Power, Mike Hedges
2016 The Great Print Exhibition, Rheged
2016 C-art Cumbrian Artist of the Year, Rheged, 2 video works
2014 Northern Print Biennale
2010 Swimming Without Water, Moseley Road Baths, Birmingham, Participatory,
site- specific installation in Moseley Baths.
2008 Ecocentric: Video Lounge, Sonoma County Museum, Santa Rosa, CA.

Video installation

2007- 11 6 artist residencies in schools in Cumbria for Creative Partnerships.
2006 Newcastle upon Tyne, Billboard for Byker Metro. Next Stop Byker
2006 FRED, Greenbelt. Video Installation, B+Q Penrith
2005 Artevisa,’ Elles sont passés par d’ici’. Site- specific interventions in Loquivy,
France. Immersed, (Girlfish), DVD 5mins; Immersed, (Moon),8mins
2003 Skipton, North Yorkshire, Exchange. Video installation
2003 Sewborwens Farm, Cumbria, Herd. Solo video installation
2002 Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, FUSE. Video installation
2003 Maryport Lamp Post Project, Allerdale Borough Council. Awarded Tilley
Award for Crime Prevention, 2004
2000 – 2002 Artist in Residence, Ewanrigg Estate, Maryport, Allerdale Borough Council
1996 Ellesmere Road Project. and Shariff’s Corner Shop, Canning Street, Benwell. Participatory environmental art residency initiated by West End Participation in Leisure, 1996.
1995 Artist’s Residency at the West End Health Resource Centre, Adelaide Terrace, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Artist’s Agency.

Publications and conference papers

2017 A Permeable Home Next to the River. Visualising the Home Conference, University of Cumbria Department of Photography.
2013 Girlfish included in the Poems Underwater project, a mermaid anthology
2010 Fisherman and Girlfish Cited in Site- Writing, Jane Rendell 2010, pp.185- 193)
2008 Cue Cumbria! (Spring 2008), Making The Wind Visible
2005 A-N Magazine Environmental Engagement
2005 Artist’s presentation at Out Of The Box Into The Landscape, CLEAR, Cumbria Institute of the Arts
2005 Artist’s presentation at New Fields: Art and Agriculture Conference, Littoral, Leeds
2004 Folly Lancaster, conference paper: New Media Art and the Rural Environment
2003 A-N Magazine Skipton Transformed

Awards

2000 FUSE bursary from the Compassion in World Farming Trust and Littoral
2003 Arts Council of England
2005 Arts Council of England

Public Collections

St Chad’s College, University of Durham