Studio at 17

About Us

Studio at 17 is a Loughborough-based collective and studio community supporting artists with lived experience of long-term mental ill health. Active for over 30 years — previously known as Albert Street Artists — we provide studio space, peer support, and opportunities to develop and exhibit work. Alongside our working studios on Southfields Road, we run Tangent Gallery, a public-facing exhibition space that showcases members’ practices and hosts regular exhibitions. Studio at 17 offers a supportive environment where artists can sustain creative practice, build confidence, and connect with wider audiences. In July 2026, Studio at 17 became a Community Interest Company.

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Who We Are:

Our current membership brings together artists working across painting, drawing, printmaking, textiles, collage, ceramics, video and installation. Each member has their own approach, interests and pace of working, but the studio is shaped by a shared commitment to making, learning and supporting one another. Together, we form an active, creative community rooted in lived experience, peer support and the ongoing development of individual practice.

Ari Boora

Ari Boora works across painting, drawing and sketchbook practice, using art as a way to explore self-reclamation, difference and emotional transformation. Their work often draws from nature, personal reflection and popular culture, approaching making as a process of letting go of perfectionism and becoming more present.

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Purnima Chavda

Purnima Chavda works across printmaking, drawing and textiles, often drawing on family photographs, documents, and personal history as a starting point. Influenced by her travels and cultural experiences, she creates work shaped by memory, environment, and connection across generations.

Victoria Clark

Victoria Clark works across video, installation and painting. Guided by themes of contrast, presence and absence, she begins with a central idea and allows the work to evolve through repetition and experimentation, often using both contemporary and older technologies in her process.

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Paul Dexter

Paul Dexter works across painting and drawing, creating still lifes, portraits, landscapes and lettering-based works. Active in the UK graffiti scene in the 1980s under the names Tempt and Caper, and a member of the Leicester collective NRG, he continues to explore lettering and imagined urban scenes shaped by that early influence.

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Elly Flower

Elly creates colourful drawings inspired by flowers and plants, shaped by her background as a florist and gardener. Her work focuses on the simple act of noticing and celebrating natural forms, using colour and line to bring moments of brightness into everyday life.

Stephen Fox

Stephen Fox works primarily in painting and drawing, creating landscapes, still lifes and occasional portraits in watercolour, acrylic and oil. He often begins with a sketch drawn from imagination or photographs, developing the image through a direct and intuitive painting process.

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Davey Grace

Davey Grace works across printmaking and long-form video, creating lino reduction prints and films inspired by wildlife, skate culture and Christian iconography. Drawing on everyday life in Loughborough, his work reflects the communities and spaces that matter to him, including projects that have supported improvements to the local skatepark.

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