Meet: Ashley Sheekey is an artist living and working in Brighton, UK. She studied Fine Art in Falmouth and Brighton, and in 2019, undertook a month long residency in west Wales. Her work has been included in various exhibitions across the UK.

"Caught between two-dimensional and three-dimensional planes, collage and observation, the viewer occupies the position of town planner and bystander at once. Fitting since Sheekey’s work explores the relationship between affect and locales, with a sensitive if purposeful command of line. Quotidian railings float in seemingly boundless space, as her work asks: how do we delineate places, if not by a physical boundary?” — @galesammi

Working on: "At the moment I’m creating some quicker drawings to try and surprise myself. I tend to labour over my drawings for a long while, so it’s been good to challenge myself," Ashley told Plinth."Over the past few years, I’ve been learning to make ceramics, and during our many lockdowns I’ve had a lot more time to put into this. I’ve been a bit uncertain if, or how, this relates to my ongoing art practice, but I’m starting to feel excited by some sculptural possibilities - thinking about the visual language of railings and boundaries. There are some intriguing ideas in my head, but I’ll have to see if they can withstand the kiln!"

Meet: Alex Foley has a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Oxford. It was during this degree they began painting as a means of coping with the stress of graduate life. A transatlantic transplant, they currently live in Hove, UK and work during the day in gender equality.

"Alex Foley’s is a realism that momentarily tips the world off its axis. Glitches, whether thick daubs of paint or doubly-exposed faces, evoke personal and intuitive attempts to inhabit their subjects, rather than simply record them with the usual tools of verisimilitude. How is it that fish, which I have seen so often piled on ice for sale, can appear such curious bedfellows, tails submerged in murky water, as if the school took a wrong path and sprouted up through the kitchen sink?" — @galesammi

Working on: “I've found myself really paring back my work during lockdown," Alex told Plinth. "I'm currently working on a series of small-scale still lifes and portraits of friends on linen and wood.”

Meet: Jade Blackstock (B. 1993, Birmingham) is a UK-based, British Jamaican performance artist. Her work explores questions of the body and identity in relation to historical, cultural and personal events and experiences.

“White paint, honey, twine rope, bowls, milk – incorporating materials that could belong to any time or place, Jade Blackstock’s performances approach a single story again and again: specific to our time, and yet just out of reach.

"The artist finds herself in situ as if for the first time; yet, little gestures (say, taking off a pair of shoes and placing them carefully in the grass) communicate a level of intimacy, both with her surroundings and her audience.

"Familiar and unfamiliar, there pulses an abiding sense of something lost or almost lost; something for which Blackstock’s rituals – tying up rope, pulling it taut, marking, smearing, dripping, or pouring - might become the apparatus for its recovery.

"By the end of a performance, sometimes the white boxes of a parking bay appear consecrated, and sometimes they are just plain white lines. The artist’s status has changed, often visibly with the marks and mess of molasses or mud – but ‘how’ it has shifted remains unclear.

"Instead, the world outside the performance’s sphere, in all its plurality and capriciousness, slides into view: demystified and worth reclaiming” — @galesammi

Working on: "At the moment, I am doing quite a bit of reading, collecting materials for future use, and working on some ideas for my performance for Glasgow BUZZCUT, which is a live art festival in Glasgow", Jade told Plinth. "The pandemic has really altered my approach to making work, but I am hoping that I could still keep elements of liveness in the stuff I make, despite the current challenges."

Head over to @Plinthuk to nominate followers whose work we should spotlight and keep up with #PlinthPlinth to discover up and coming artists.