On Saturday 8th October 2016, 6-9pm, Instigate Arts take over the main gallery space at HOME in Manchester to host our ‘Identity’ pop-up exhibition. In this series of Q&A’s we get a little more insight into what makes some some of the participating artists tick. Here we speak with artist Jez Dolan

Can you tell us about your practice?

I work across artforms, currently I work mainly with printmaking, but also installation, drawing and performance. My work centres around the exploration of Queer identity, and I work a lot with archival material as a leaping-off point in the creation of new work

How does your work relate to the themes of Identity?

I think that all my work relates to identity, specifically as a Queer artist looking at identity through shared histories and personal archives. This performance work comes from an ongoing project which uses the diaries of `George Cecil Ives (1867 – 1950), who founded the Order of Chaeronea, the world’s first secret homosexual society

Do you think the themes of Identity relate to the current political and social climate?

Politics in this country seems to be consistently based on identity (not in a positive way), the way someone looks, or what they wear rather than what they think or believe….. As society becomes consistently more conformist; the high street, TV, Music identity expression becomes all the more important….

How important is the role of artists’, and the art world, in shaping both people’s lives, and the social and political landscape?

I’d hope that art can, at its best make some kind of turbulence in the landscape, or a cut in an approved reality which can make people think in a different way.