Cassy Oliphant West Yorkshire, United Kingdom
For over twenty years, my practice as a community artist has centred on participation, storytelling, and collective making. Recently, through Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice fund, I have refocused on my personal creative work - exploring the intersection between Chinese and European folklore, inherited craft traditions, and the shifting nature of cultural identity.
My practice moves between painting, textile, and photographic processes such as cyanotype. I draw on the symbolic language of animals in myth and folklore, using them as recurring figures through which transformation, migration, and belonging can be explored. Folklore sits alongside personal family narratives, allowing imagined and inherited histories to converge. By contrasting Chinese and European stories, I examine how myths change through translation, distance, and retelling. Echoing the ways memory itself alters across generations.
Artwork
Eve, Watercolour and Gold Leaf, 2025, £650
Kinnari, Watercolour and Gold Leaf, 2025, £650
Nuwa, Watercolour and Gold Leaf, 2025, £650
Harpy, Watercolour and Gold Leaf, 2025, £650
Murmuration, Watercolour on Paper, 2025, £750
Islands, Cyanotype and fabric on cotton, 2025, NFS
Glisk, Watercolour on Paper, 2025, £1100
Projects and exhibitions
| Details | |||
|---|---|---|---|
|
Ones To Watch 202610/01/2026 — ongoing |
Sunny Bank Mills, Leeds | Details |
|
Scattered Stories15/10/2025 — 09/11/2025 Scattered Stories A creative exploration by Cassy Oliphant of memory and myth, where family stories meet Chinese and European folktales in shifting acts of repair. |
Left Bank Leeds, Leeds | Details |
|
Leeds Summer Group Show 202503/07/2025 — 23/07/2025 My piece Bridge of Magpies was selected to be part of the Summer Group Show that takes place at Leeds Playhouse. |
Leeds Playhouse, Leeds | Details |
Ancient Tongues and Tales19/11/2019 — 12/01/2020 Symbols, story, art... the ways we first discovered how to communicate, to connect. Hidden in the veins of a leaf, in the silvery slime of a snail, in the shoreline’s shifting pattern... are the memories of worlds we’ve always known but believe we have forgotten. In our bones, we hold the stories of stars and sand. In our blood, flows... [Read more] |
The Fernie Brae, Portland, Oregon, UNITED STATES | Details | |
Human Kind Collective Exhibition - Rites of Passage16/06/2018 — 23/06/2018 Rites of passage speak of moments of transformation and stages of deep introspection by the artists of Human Kind as we make sense of our journey on this earth. Each person’s rites in our modern world are completely different, coming from our own unique perspective. We all share a sense of needing this dialogue as our ancient selves scramble... [Read more] |
Aire Place Studios, Leeds | Details | |
Humankind Collective Exhibition - Stories from Wild Women21/05/2017 — 23/06/2017 We are a group of artists responding to nature, the magic we see within it and our role as female storytellers using art to connect us back to earth. Using a range of media, and each with our own styles, we invite you to come in, have a brew and enjoy a celebration of our creativity. |
Aire Place Studios, Leeds | Details |