Zoë Allen is interested in the physicality and materiality of the built environment. In her practice she makes structures which are concerned with composition, structure, site and scale in an attempt to explore the boundaries between sculpture and architecture. Zoe graduated from the University of Reading in 2002 and lived and worked in London for 7 years before returning to her native Northumberland. She has several years of experience teaching and developing interpretation as part of both formal and informal learning programmes in regional and national art galleries, including Tate Modern and the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle. She is currently studying for an MFA at Newcastle University.

Irene Brown is degree programme director of the MFA at Newcastle University. She has over twenty years experience of combining a senior academic teaching and research role with a distinguished career as a site specific public artist and installationist. Her artworks are unique pieces made in response to each individual site. Many projects have been concerned with providing iconic imagery for developing, or new community spaces. Research themes are concerned with ideas of the specialness or inviolability of a site – how a regular space can be transformed into one of pilgrimage and power.  Irene is also curator of the Gallery of Wonder, a conference point and exhibition facility for research into the evocation of wonder through display. Fundamentally understood as a contemporary gallery it invites exploration into the potential of visual display to provoke enquiry and stimulate innovative associations. Its aim is to encourage the questioning of the conventional relationships between art and science, gallery and museum.