Artefacts of Interaction

Recoverist = Recovery + Activist

These four large-scale co-produced paintings emerged from a series of workshops led by lead artist Will Belshah and hosted at the newly opened Arches space at HOME. The works are not only collaborative they are also a convergence of the five artists’ personal histories, artistic inquiry, and radical vulnerability.

The exhibition explores the tangled terrain where neurodivergence, substance use (prescribed or illicit), and artistic practice can intersect. It is a meditation on how lived experience informs creativity — from queerness to the ways different bodies move through space, to the role of art as a site of connection, recovery, and unfiltered reflection.

The contributing artists approached their process without prescription or polish. What unfolds is a raw, unguarded spectrum of expression where creativity becomes a method of survival, and collaboration becomes community. Here, Recovery is not an endpoint but a practice: one of listening, making, and being together. A project initiated by Portraits of Recovery and delivered in partnership with HOME and Venture Arts. 

Venture Arts is an award-winning visual arts organisation working with learning disabled artists. Through our studio programmes, exhibitions and collaborative projects, we remove barriers to the arts, we put artists in the lead, we champion neurodiversity and provide pathways for every individual to develop their creative identity.

An event for Portraits of Recovery’s Recoverist Month: Sept 2025 - placing lived experience at the heart of an annual, month-long arts programme that re-writes narratives on substance use and recovery.

Listen to the accompanying audio here.