Ash McNaughton (B.1990 / Scotland) is an action-based artist currently situated in Folkestone, UK. Their practice is a process-led exploration of materials, gesture, movement, and sound. Site-responsive, durational, and ritualistic in nature; Ash implements methods of endurance, repetition, and resistance to access altered states of being while reaching out into the spaces in-between. Their actions encourage a synergetic exchange between their physical, psychological, and spiritual body and the environments they inhabit.
This practice is an attempt to articulate that which escapes us.
A poetics of a fluid presence in a fixed world.
Ash is an independent artist AND PRODUCER. tHEY ARE co-organiser of SITE - a platform for collective site-responsive art interventions - and a member of the international Anam Cara collective. They are ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR aT ]performance s p a c e[ and AS the Folkestone Local Associate Producer for New Queers On The Block (2021 -PRESENT) THEY ARE CURATOR AND PRODUCER OF QUEERCALL FESTIVAL. They facilitate workshops that hold FOCUS ON Performance Art practices which have been hosted by Grays School of Art, Tate, Whitechapel Gallery, and Middlesex University. They obtained their BA Hons in Sculpture from Grays School of Art (2013) and MA in Performance (Contemporary Art Practice) from the Royal College of Art (2018). They have performed within the UK and Europe, including Aberdeen Art Gallery (Aberdeen, Scotland, UK), Haddo House Arts Festival (Ellon, Scotland, UK), Tramway (Glasgow, UK), Venice International Performance Artweek (Venice, Italy), Electrocamp Festival (Mestre, Italy), Revolve Festival (Uppsala, Sweden), Whitechapel Gallery (London, UK), Tempting Failure (Croydon, England, UK), and Salvage Festival (Folkestone, England, UK).