Artist Mentoring

Emerging Artist Mentoring Programme

Flax Art Studios recently received funding through ACNI Sustainability and Renewal, and we were delighted that Peter Richards hosted a series of zoom mentoring sessions. The focus of these sessions were to provide support and career development advice during the pandemic and for the future sustainability emerging artist practice. 

Peter Richards has over twenty years’ experience in the arts, both as a curator and as an artist. He has led the Golden Thread Gallery since 2001 and is the current Chair of the Belfast Visual Arts Forum. Peter has developed and managed projects across Northern Ireland, nationally and internationally, including the large-scale exhibition Voices Travel at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Art in Taiwan. He is currently serving on the Board of Cathedral Quarter Trust and as Secretary of Association International De Critiques D’Art (AICA) Ireland.
As an artist based in Belfast, in the North of Ireland.  He works in a range of media including forms of photography, installation and performance. His works can be seen as artistic enquiries into subjects, such as: how understanding is formed and truth is subscribed to; how we have the capacity to suspend disbelief in order to continue believing in chosen truths. Richards often engages with interactions between re-presentation, time and referencing. He exhibits internationally and, in 2005, participated in Northern Ireland’s inaugural presentation at the Venice Biennale, ‘The Nature of Things – A Long Weekend’.

As part of the programme Peter Richards carried out the following short-recorded conversations with artists from our Emerging Artist Hub.


John Connolly


Phil Keers


Katherine Paisley


Claire Lyons


Dominic McKeown


Ben Malcolmson


Hattie Godfrey


Stephanie Tanney