ACTION!

Holly Graham 

Holly Graham is a London-based artist, working predominantly with print and audio. Much of Holly’s work looks at ways in which memory and narrative shape our collective histories.

After Harry Jacobs Green Fingers II, video still, 2019.


For TACO!  Holly is undertaking a long term residency project working with material from the Thamesmead Community Archive and with communities in Thamesmead. The project takes as its starting point Community Led Anti Racism actions and fills a gap in story-telling; speaking with local residents to collect information and material about how the racism and division within Thamesmead during the early 1990’s was responded to by members of the local community. Through a series of interviews and collection of materials, she hopes to document the anti-racist social action taken by local people and groups. 

The project also aims to address Black representation in relation both to the archive and to Thamesmead as a place. Thamesmead has a unique relationship to African communities, being home to one of the largest African diaspora in the UK, while both the Black British and African social history is largely absent from official records and shared narratives of the area.  Holly will be working to develop a public programme of community engagement and public research leading to the proposal for an ambitious project to be realised in the future. 

Holly graduated from MA Printmaking at the Royal College of Art in 2014. Recent exhibitions and projects include: To Us It Just Looks Like A Lemon: Bothy Residency, Southwark Park Galleries (2019); On Board II, Art Licks & Espacio Vista, Madrid; BOUNDS, Skelf, Online (2019); The Oval Window, Gerald Moore Gallery, London (2019); The Romance of Flowers, Kingsgate Projects, London (2018); Common Third, Copperfield, London (2018); Carefully Cleansed of Labour and Softened by Cooking, Compressor, London (2018); and Sweet Swollen, Jerwood Visual Arts: Project Space, London (2018). Holly is Head of Artist Development at Turf Projects, Croydon, and is Co-Founder of Cypher BILLBOARD, London.