DAVID AINLEY

In his series 'Landscape Issues'   David Ainley examines places in which landscape bears traces of human intervention, in particular the mined and quarried areas of Derbyshire and Cornwall.   His works present the process of painting itself as content, and by inference the process itself as a mirror to observed geographical processes. Belland references hidden mine shafts in the South Pennines. David has exhibited at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, Derby Museum & Art Gallery, and had three drawings in the Jerwood Drawing Prize.

JOAN AINLEY

Joan Ainley has been described as an enigmatic artist whose practice includes installation, editions, multiples and unique pieces. Her artwork frequently engages with   dichotomy: in particular ephemeral/permanent;   camouflage/advertising; past/present. Her most recent activity is an installation work entitled Cross of Lorraine at Southwell Minster (autumn 2007).

DAVID BAILEY

No, not the photographer! This is David Bailey formerly of the Designer's Republic, now Kiosk, the creative consultancy in Sheffield. BITR have been working with/on David for the last year, and we think in him we have found the key...

HELEN BARFF

Goldsmithian and former New Contempories shortlstee, Helen Barff exhibited at Bend in the River this time last year. Her work has since been on show as part of the Richard Demarco archive in Edinburgh and also at the Rabley Contemporary Drawing Centre in Wiltshire. We welcome this Londoner back this year with an image of a buoy retrieved from the Thames.

BOB BILLINGTON

Since his solo show at Bend in the River in 2006, Bob Billington has exhibited four works at the Kettle's Yard Open and worked on a limited edition of hand-drawn lithographic prints for the Curwen Print Studio in Cambridge. He continues to experiment with shaped wall-based pieces, and we will be taking a selection of new work to the London Art Fair in January.

MICHAEL BOWDIDGE

Michael Bowdidge's 'Process(ion)' (autumn 2007) was the result of BITR's second residency project at the former Church of St John's, Gainsborough; the first resident was Claudia Pilsl in 2005/6. Michael has subsequently moved to Edinburgh where he continues to play with found furniture.

DUNCAN BULLEN

In recent years Duncan Bullen has replaced the square format with circles, octagons, hexagons and crosses. Using barely perceptible tonal   gradations of paint, he seeks to embue these simple forms with a particular intensity, a jewel-like quality. Bullen studied at the Royal College in the early 1990s and is currently senior lecturer in printmaking at the University of Brighton.   He visited us recently with the Revd Dr Richard Davey.

JACOB CARTWRIGHT AND NICK JORDAN

Jacob Cartwright and Nick Jordan live in Manchester, and have been generating art and exhibiting it together since the late 1990s. They describe their influences as: 'surrealism, natural history, folklore, myth, old Europe, new wave cinema and weird Americana' - which just about covers everything.   They currently have a book, Alien Invaders: a guide to non-native species of the Britisher Isles (2006) that's well worth reading.

PETER CARTWRIGHT

Peter Cartwright has had two solo shows with Bend in the River (1998 and 2005), and will be presented at the London Art Fair in January. This will be followed by a solo show of entirely new work in spring/summer 2008 here at the gallery in Gainsborough.

LIADIN COOKE

When she makes objects, Liadin Cooke works with discordant materials and to awkward scales. She uses   recollection and in particular fragments of memory as starting points for ideas, forcing them into a new and often dislodged world. Cooke's work was included in Yorkshire Sculpture Park's 'New Sculpture from Ireland' in 2005, and is included in the current New Art Collection at Roche Court.

BERNARD CULSHAW

Fifteen years ago Bernard Culshaw made the decision to stop restoring his house in Worksop and start painting full time. He has done so ever since, and his output is prolific. His portraits are almost always drawn from popular press images and to date he has never painted the eyes.

RICHARD DEVEREUX

Richard Devereux first started working with carbon in 1986. This year he has produced his most ambitious work to date using the technique. Carbon is an elemental substance wherein life is created and to which it returns, and such fundamental facts closely inform the artist's works and indeed their titles. BITR will be presenting Richard Devereux at the London Art Fair in January.

NICHOLAS DE SERRA

De Serra has not exhibited for a number of years, following a solo show at the Rocket Gallery in London shortly after graduating from Winchester School of Art in the early 90s. He now lives in darkest Dorset, keeps down a day job and needs encouragement to take up the brush. We first encountered his work at Bournemouth University's exhibition space several years ago.

PAUL EVANS

Paul Evans was encouraged to take up painting by the Guardian critic Robert Clark;   he had previously been a graphic designer and surfer. Here he shows an artwork that has been made specifically for the 60 th Show, a picture worked on over a course of 60 drawing sessions. Evans showed at Persistence Works, Sheffield last year, and this year we welcome this Sheffield painter for the first time.

STEFAN GEC

Gec's photograph was taken on a visit to the cosmonaut training facility at Star City near Moscow; what is depicted is the full-size replica space station that has been installed in a gigantic tank of water in order to replicate a gravity-free environment. Gec's work has been shown extensively since the mid 1990s, including: Transmission Gallery, Glasgow; Annely Juda, London, John Hansard, Southampton;   ICA, London; and has been installed or otherwise projected and staged at the Tyne Bridge, Newcastle-upon-Tyne,   Barrow in Furness and Cardiff Bay.

MIGUEL ANGEL GIGLIO

We first showed the paintings of Chilean-born Miguel Giglio back in 1998, when he was living in Birmingham. He now lives in Rome, from where he travels around the world painting stage sets. He has exhibited artwork in Britain, Italy and throughout South America. An enduring theme in his work is war and torture.

MIK GODLEY

Adriana is one of Mik's most recent portraits of cyberspace-sourced Polish Silesian women. He now sees this ongoing portrait project as an 'ethnographic survey' reminiscent of the work of early photographers, who used their new medium to compile examples of racial stereotypes.

MARCUS HAMMOND

Marcus Hammond had his first solo exhibition of paintings age 14; subsequently went to Goldsmiths and then became a builder for 20 years. He now leads a drawing group for 'transition years' children age 10-12, and has set up 'creative' sessions for a group of teenagers who call themselves the Slumgoths. Director of Bend in the River, he has personally hung all 60 shows.

KEITH HAYMAN

Keith is a town planner turned artist who lives and works in Sheffield. In 2006 he and the consultant Paul Swales worked with BITR on a development plan, which actually was useful and has helped us to see a bigger picture. Keith won the Derby Open in 2005 and subsequently exhibited a larger body of work at Derby City Museum & Art Gallery (2007). His current work is spreading off the paper and across the floor, a plan is emerging...

BRIAN HOLLAND

Torn is an artwork that holds particular affection for Brian Holland, it being the first paperclay sculptural form that he produced.   As such he has closely guarded it, and BITR have had to go to some lengths to extricate it from his   hands. Brian has recently returned from London where he has been coordinating the 'Northern Fire II' exhibition at the Oxo Tower Gallery.

ASIF KAMAL

We first showed the paintings of Asif Kamal in 1996; at that time he was consultant physician at Lincoln County Hospital. Now in semi-retirement, he continues to paint in his own discreet fashion. We encourage him as much as we can, and seasonally cajole him to let us see what he has been painting.

JANE KENNELLY

Jane Kennelly may be a printmaker and may be a botanist. The first work by this York-based artist that we saw was a boxed set of photo-intaglio prints entitled Florilegium ; it was accompanied by Francis Ponge's prose poem 'Flore et Faune'. Ponge sought to convey the spiritual animation of plant life, and it is this that Kennelly holds close to her heart. She is currently working on a series of orchid prints courtesy of a grant from Arts Council Yorkshire.

ANASTASIA LEWIS

Anastasia Lewis had her first solo show with Bend in the River in spring/summer 2007. She has subsequently taken possession of a new studio space in Lincolnshire, has reworked some of the larger canvases and started painting some much looser monochromatic landscapes. BITR will be presenting her new work at the London Art Fair in January.

ROBERT MACHAN

Robert was one of the very first visitors we ever had, way back in 1996.   He completely surprised us by bringing with him a book on Basquiat. Robert paints to live, and we have supported him in this way of life for many years now. Enduring themes in his work are the town of Gainsborough, the trams of Sheffield and the east Lincolnshire coast.

DAVID MEASURES

The Natural History Museum website describes David Measures as influencing 'a generation of natural history artists ... not wishing to follow traditional methods ... he chose instead to develop a technique that enabled an immediate method of recording his observations in the field'.   Measures is a foremost practitioner in his field, but for us it is his fine art work that holds the interest; paintings of Cressbrookdale that he has undertaken for several decades. His method is the key; weekly visits to a precise location in the dale, come rain or shine, working and reworking his watercolours always in-situ and sometimes for months.

SUSAN MICHIE

Over the past two years we have been working with Susan on an exhibition of 42 five-foot five-inch drawings, which will be shown at the former church of St John's next autumn. In the meantime, a small number of her works will be at the London Art Fair in January.

CLAUDIA PILSL

Bristol-based Claudia Pilsl is Austrian by birth. She was BITR's inaugural artist-in-residence at the former St John's while heavily pregnant with twins in 2005/6. She has since exhibited at the Liverpool Biennial (2006) and currently has work in a group show in Germany alongside Thomas Struth and Victor Burgin. In The Museum of the 21 st Century she continues to explore notions of redundancy, in particular of cultural institutions.

DEREK SPRAWSON

Derek continues to paint carefully staged still life compositions from his 'garden shed' studio in Southwell, and to teach Fine Art to the students of Nottingham Trent University.

RICHARD SHEPHERD

Richard continues his experiments on new paintings that we will be taking to the London Art Fair, and has moved into a garage studio in central Norwich. He continues to teach art to users of the Norfolk and Norwich Scope Association.

IAN SHERMAN

This artist is a conundrum. He was a Slade Art School performance artist in the mid-1980s, when we first knew him he was a painter and digital artist, now he mostly works with large corporations as an IT consultant. He now makes short films, paints watercolours and produces odd objects from his home in Barnstaple, north Devon.

CHRISTOPHER TAYLOR

BITR will be showing Taylor's photographs of the Yellow River Basin in China next summer at the former church of St John's. Born and brought up in Skegness, Taylor moved to southern France where he has lived all his adult life. His exquisite photographs have been seldom shown in the UK, with the exception of a solo exhibition at the Photographer's Gallery in London. His exhibition history includes solo exhibitions in Paris, Barcelona, Osaka and Shanghai.

HENRY TIETZSCH-TYLER

This painter occupies one of the last remaining studios at the Leadmill in Sheffield. An Anglo-German, he has sought over the years to explore his mixed identity via his art, initially as a performance artist and then through the act and activity of painting. His work has been exhibited intermittently in the north of England for 20 years and abroad in Amsterdam and Prague.

DAVID WILLETTS

Bend in the River first exhibited the work of David Willetts in 1998 with a solo exhibition of drawings of pumpkins in various stages of decay. Over the years we have particularly enjoyed his depictions of poppies, which he has at various times both drawn and painted.

DAVE DEX WRIGHT

The artist otherwise known as Tapenoise, Resonance FM and Mr Wright the farmer, Dave started out as a Sheffield art student. He has crossed our path on various occasions over the years, most recently when he did a sound session for the Slumgoths.