Inspire me
Pride Month Spotlight: 7 queer artists you should know
Meet 7 queer artists whose beautiful, bold artworks reflect the richness of queer identity.
Affordable Art Fair
Tuesday 10 June, 2025
This Pride Month, we’re celebrating the vibrant LGBTQIA+ voices shaping contemporary art today – all represented by galleries in our Affordable Art Fair roster!
As champions of living artists, we’re proud to spotlight these talented creators who are making their mark right now. From Abi Birkinshaw’s vivid works that blur memory and dream, to Mark Mann’s ceramics that reclaim overlooked queer histories, to Ross Head’s award-winning explorations of masculinity and desire – these artists embody the richness and innovation of contemporary queer creativity.
1. Mark Mann, represented by Gray Area Gallery
Mark Mann, a Norfolk-based artist, works across ceramics, textiles, and bronze. His art reclaims overlooked queer histories and hidden interior worlds.
Mark draws on the coded language of domestic interiors created by homosexual men before homosexuality was legalised in the UK. These spaces, often clandestine, are reframed as sites of beauty, resistance, and ritual. His work feels luxurious yet loaded, transforming queer discomfort into monuments of pride.
2. Kenza Gray, Co-Founder of Gray Area Gallery
Kenza Gray, artist and co-founder of Gray Area Gallery, shoots ceramic vases with a gun. Known for her “destructive pottery,” her work challenges the soft, traditional aesthetic of ceramics through violent, unpredictable creation.
“We’re a lesbian couple, and that very fact shapes our gallery, our work, and our curatorial voice.”
– Kenza Gray & Marie-Laurence Boisvery, Co-Founders of Gray Area Gallery
The bullet holes and shattered forms become part of the final piece, transforming destruction into beauty and questioning our assumptions about control and perfection.
“The act of painting is a contemplative state, where I can process emotions and experiences that are difficult to articulate.”
– Abi Birkinshaw
3. Abi Birkinshaw, represented by Columbia Road Gallery
Abi Birkinshaw’s paintings draw directly from her daily life, narrating experiences that are hard to articulate. Her most recent work explores endings and what comes after – headless figures, floating limbs, and familiar objects drift through dreamlike, ambiguous worlds. Her liminal canvases, suspended between real and imagined, offer space for reflection, memory, and queer storytelling.
“My work is autobiographical. It comes from my lived experience. It’s inherently queer, because I’m inherently queer.”
– Abi Birkinshaw
4. Daniel Franklin, represented by Gray Area Gallery
Based in East Anglia, Daniel Franklin brings a filmmaker’s eye to his oil paintings. His background in moving image helps him create cinematic compositions that capture fleeting moments from larger, undisclosed narratives. Franklin’s portraits celebrate stillness and softness, finding the emotional weight in moments of pause. Focused on “in-between” gestures, his figures feel suspended – strong and uncertain all at once.
“The ways that desire is performed and expressed is central to my practice.”
– Ross Head
5. Ross Head, winner of Affordable Art Fair Recent Graduate Bursary Award 2024
Ross Head explores queerness, masculinity, and body image through paintings with lush textures and subtle, intimate gestures. Drawing from film and archival photography, his scenes float between fantasy and memory.
A graduate of the Slade School of Art, Ross was awarded the 2024 JM Finn Graduate Artist Award, recognising his emerging talent at a pivotal stage in his career.
6. Caitlin Flood-Molyneux, represented by Gray Area Gallery
Welsh artist Caitlin Flood-Molyneux mines pop culture and personal memory to create raw, unflinching work about survival and identity. Their mixed media pieces transform intimate struggles into bold visual narratives, turning pain into power through storytelling. Shortlisted for Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2024, they’re recognised as a rising voice in contemporary art.
7. Radek Husak, represented by Gray Area Gallery
Born in Poland and based in London, Radek Husak creates vivid, figurative artworks which reimagine classical and religious iconography. Exploring beauty, identity, and queer sensuality with unflinching spiritual drama, the result feels both sacred and subversive.
Happy Pride Month from all of us at Affordable Art Fair!
And if you’re still craving more Affordable Art Fair, we’ll be back in Battersea Park this Autumn, 15 – 19 October!
