Latest Shape collaboration: Exhibiting artist in the ILHAM exhibition in Qatar. Featured in our Shape Collection & exhibited at the Shape Open. Jason was the recipient of the Adam Reynolds Award 2020 and will be exhibiting his newly commissioned sculpture I am Argonaut as part of the Folkestone Triennial (deferred to July-November 2021). To catch his work in another dimension, visit out augmented reality exhibition Unfolding Shrines (ARA Shortlist exhibition 2020)  

Artist Statement: Art has always played a pivotal role in Jason Wilsher-Mills life and as a child he remember being asked what he wanted to be when he grows up. His answer was ‘to be an artist’. Jason became very ill as an 11 year old, which caused him to be paralysed from the neck down for 5 years. Throughout this time of complete paralysis Jason attended a special school and painted with a specially designed ‘mouthpiece’. Jason was 16 when he regained his mobility, as his condition had gone into remission. In December 2011 Wilsher-Mills purchased an iPad several days after Christmas, after much soul searching and research into what would be the best way to start making art again. David Hockney had seemingly made making art on an iPad ‘legitimate’. This purchase was a pivotal moment for Wilsher-Mills, as it helped him decide to become a full time artist. Wilsher-Mills images reflect the issues relating to his disability, and the illness, which took his mobility away, in a way, which he stated, I hope is sometimes humorous and most importantly what I call ‘good art’. Making art on an iPad has given Wilsher-Mills a great deal of freedom and enabled him to once again produce complex images, anywhere and at any time. These paintings are then printed using the Giclée printing method, and can be printed up to a very large scale. Using an iPad means that the surface is negotiable on which Wilsher-Mills makes his art, but the integrity of the image is not. It also affords him the opportunity to work anywhere, using the small 9 x 7 inch screen to create digital paintings, which as he had said can be printed to very large sizes. Wilsher-Mills has exhibited throughout the world and was fortunate to be commissioned to create 2 banners for the House of Parliament ‘Road to Freedome’ exhibition in 2015. Wilsher-Mills undertook a residency and exhibition at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar with the support of the British Council. In the past 5 years Wilsher-Mills has worked with over 20,000 participants on residencies, including a one year artist in residency with Wakefield Trinity RLFC.

 'Memory Boogie Woogie Boogie' (What my Dadddy Did in the War)

Check out Jason's website   See all the artists we work with

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Banner image: (c) Photo Moments, 2020 Work by Jason Wilsher-Mills. Description: A brightly coloured figure sits on an orange spacehopper. Behind is a wall covered in a cartoon-like wallpaper.