About Me
For over twenty years, my practice as a community artist has centred on participation and collective making. Through the recent Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice fund, I have focused on my personal creative work.
I draw on the symbolic language of animals in myth and folklore, using them as recurring figures through which transformation, migration and belonging can be explored. Folklore sits alongside personal family narratives, allowing imagined and inherited histories to converge. By contrasting Chinese and European stories, I examine how myths change through translation and distance, echoing the ways memory alters across generations.
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Embroidery, painting and cyanotype provide material metaphors for these ideas: exposure, layering, and repair. Stitching connects me to the Peranakan heritage within my family, while cyanotypes’ play of light and shadow mirrors the revealing and obscuring of family memory. Painting, by contrast, offers a sense of fluidity, a space where identity can merge and reform, reflecting my experience of dual heritage.
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I accept commissions for artwork and workshops. Please get in touch via email hello@cassyoliphant.com
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Exhibitions
2026
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NAE Open 2026, New Art Exchange, Nottingham
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Scott Creative Arts Foundation Finalist, Danum Gallery, Doncaster - Winner announced in July
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Ones to Watch 2026, Sunny Bank Mills, Leeds
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Unfolding Identities - Contemporary Chinese Diaspora Exhibition 2026, Westminster City Hall, London
2025​​​
- Solo Show - Scattered Stories - Left Bank Leeds, Leeds, UK
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Leeds Summer Group Show, Leeds Playhouse, Leeds, UK
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Artists of Heart, Headingley Enterprise and Arts Centre, Leeds, UK
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Fronteer Gallery, Sheffield, UK
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2019
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Fernie Brae, Portland, Oregon, USA
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Kirkstall Art Trail Leeds, UK
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2018
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Creative Mothers Project, Aire Place Studios, Leeds, UK
Curated and exhibited -
Love Arts Festival, Leeds City Museum, Leeds, UK
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Pyramid Sculpture, Armley Mills Industrial Museum, Leeds, UK
Ceramic tile sculpture project with Pyramid of Arts -
Humankind, Rites of Passage
Curated and exhibited -
York River Art Market, York, UK
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2017
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Elemental Arts Event, All Hallows Church, Leeds, UK
Sustainable arts, music and food event -
Stories from Wild Women, Aire Place Studios, Leeds, UK
Curated and Exhibited -
Kirkstall Art Trail, Leeds, UK
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2016
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Artonomy, Leeds, UK
Exhibition of personal work -
York River Art Market, York, UK
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Shoddy Exhibition, Live Art Bistro, Leeds, UK
with Pyramid of Arts High Rise Group
Press
Education & Qualifications
​2022 Introduction to Permaculture for Artists and Creatives
2017 Intensive Interaction Introduction Course
2016 Non-Violent Communication training
2011 Permaculture Design Course
2010 Pyramid of Arts – In-House Training
C3 Creative Communities Course – (Artworks
Creative Communities, Bradford)
2007 Crawford College of Art and Design – Cork Art
Therapy Summer School
2004-2007 English Literature with art modules,
University of Leeds
2002-2003 Central Saint Martins College of Art and
Design - Foundation Certificate
Grants
2025-2026
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Developing Your Creative Practice (DYCP​) - Arts Council England
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2020
Artist Residencies
2020
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Studio Garonne (France)
Parent Artist Residency postponed due to Covid.
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2018
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Hollybush TCV (Leeds, UK)
Developing the theme of folktale and nature-based painting and illustration at a weekly residency in an environmental conservation centre.​