Triptych: Body, Land & Lens Residency & Commission
Three artists working in body-based performance, durational practice, movement and/or land art commissioned to create new performance-to-camera or film works
As part of IOU’s 50th anniversary programme, this commission invited three artists working in body-based performance, durational practice, movement and/or land art to create new performance-to-camera or film works in collaboration with MA Cinematography students at Leeds Beckett University.
After receiving 86 applications from artists across the UK and internationally, we’re excited to welcome the three artists selected for our IOU50 Residency Triptych: Body, Land & Lens
• Melina Peña Cota
• Lula Braimbridge
• Amy Lawrence
Theses commissioned artists will take inspiration from IOU’s 50-year archive of live performance, film-making, sculptural practice and unique approach to image making, alongside histories of performance artists working with bodies in landscape, and land artists making interventions into nature.
Their residency with IOU started in June – and the artists have been working at the IOU Creation Centre and IOU Hostel to explore IOU’s archive, spend time in the landscapes of Calderdale, share ideas, and begin shaping the seeds of three new moving-image works.
At the end of their first week they’ll be joined by three MA Cinematography students from Leeds Beckett University – Muhammad Huzaifa, Jim Cullen and Robert Barker – who were selected following their presentations to become creative collaborators on the project.
Over the coming months, each artist and film-maker pairing will develop a unique film inspired by landscape, performance, memory and ecology. Together, the three works will form a triptych inspired by IOU’s long history of experimentation with image-making and performance.
About the Artists
Amy Lawrence
Amy works as an artist and producer across projects that create sites for pleasure and ‘messiness.’ Her interrelated projects are a social commentary on 'othering' with the sticky idea of ‘healing or catharsis' and tricky notions of 'place-making' at the core. Collaborative projects with ensembles of bodies navigate lived experiences of performances of identity; melting together into different kinds of gatherings using intimacy, remedying and foraging as tools for collaboration. Amy often works in public space with natural/found elements and daylight cycles; as a backdrop to conversations between bodies and ownership. Explorations unfold across site-specific interventions, curated gatherings, food and herbalism-based works, choreography, usable objects and artist-film. Amy reimagines intimate histories and structures at ‘play,’ creating a glitchy patchwork of social politics, bringing visibility to forms of institutionalized structural labour. Projects act as a form of tribute and are always dedicated to people passing through her life.
Lula Bainbridge
Lula is a Manchester-based performer, facilitator, and sculptor whose embodied practice began through performing to the camera in nature as a way to reclaim power and find comfort within the uncomfortable. From this emerged bare bodies, dancing fibres, warm touch, and quiet presence—an invitation to return home to your own vessel and awaken to the aliveness already here. Her work searches for moments of transformation and release, exploring cycles of growth like a creature that builds its own shelter to dissolve within before re-emerging in a new form. Whether shared through performance, traces left in an installation, or tactile workshops, she lovingly manipulates materials, using her body as a tool for storytelling, fostering connection, sensory awareness, and collective release. The work is rooted in lived experience and offers a moment for the audience to explore their own emotional landscape.
Melina Peña Cota
Melina is an action and interdisciplinary artist raised between the Mexico–U.S. border and currently based in Barcelona. Her practice is grounded in the body as a site of knowledge, memory, and negotiation, and unfolds through live art, performance, and experimental formats that prioritize presence, perception, and embodied experience. Her work draws from Butoh, experimental dance, body landscape practices, and performance art, informed by a long-term engagement with critical theory and contextual research. She holds a Master’s degree in Critical Theory and Advanced Museum Studies from the Independent Studies Program (PEI) at Barcelona MACBA, along with postgraduate studies in Live Arts and Contexts (Institut del Teatre – Centre d’Osona) and in Sensory Language and the Poetics of Play with El Teatro de los Sentidos / University of Girona. She also double majored in Linguistics and World Arts & Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles, which continues to inform her interest in language, non-verbal communication, and perception. Over the past 25 years, she has presented work internationally in festivals, museums, and residencies across Europe and the Americas, collaborating with artists from diverse disciplines. Her practice is process-driven and relational, creating situations that invite audiences into a shared space of attention, reflection, and critical play. Rather than presenting fixed narratives, she constructs environments where cultural, physical, and emotional layers can be experienced and negotiated. Currently, she is interested in expanding her practice beyond live performance into sound art, body cartography, installation, and sensory-based play. She seeks to further explore how subtle gestures, silence, and multisensory experiences can generate new forms of body language and collective awareness.
What the Commission Offers the Artists :
One-week residency at IOU Hostel, Hebden Bridge
• Accommodation and catering provided during residency week
• Studio, rehearsal, and workshop access at IOU Creation Centre, Halifax
• Site visits across Calderdale and Yorkshire Sculpture Park
• Structured peer exchange between the three commissioned artists
Collaboration with fellow artists and MA Cinematography students at Leeds Beckett University.
• Individual and group mentoring with IOU’s creative team, university staff, commission partners, and invited guest artists.
• Technical filming and editing support from MA Cinematography students.
• Opportunities to develop collaborative approaches to presentation and filming
Artist stipend: £750 fee (per artist).
• Travel and expenses contribution: Individual travel / expenses budget of up to £300 (per artist).
• Material budget: Individual materials budget of up to £250 (per artist).
• Production budget: IOU will cover the costs of mounting and marketing the final presentation.
• Film-making budget: Film-making tech and equipment costs covered by our university partner.
• Accommodation and catering provided during residency week, with further stays negotiable
Contribution to IOU’s Ecology and Ecosystems Symposium (Wed 15th July 2026).
• Group critical feedback sessions (Autumn 2026).
• Presentation of work in Feb 2027 at IOU and Leeds School of Arts.
• Documentation archived within the IOU archive.
• Opportunities for public engagement, talks, and digital profiling.
• Introductions to potential future presenters