Shonagh Short is a socially engaged artist based in Bolton, Greater Manchester. They make participatory, playful work that uses language in its widest sense, including metaphor and everyday visual language, as a lens to explore class, gender and society. They have been making site-specific work with marginalised communities since 2014, and in 2018 completed a Masters in Fine Art at the University of Central Lancashire.
Aesthetically they are influenced by their working-class background, utilising everyday items as materials in order to unpick preconceived notions and distinctions between high and low art, cultural value and societal status. They use humour as a site of resistance from which structural inequalities can be made visible.
Their work is process-led, inspired by Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Maintenance Art Manifesto (1969) which reframes everyday acts of care as art, and the radical DIY spirit of punk. They have been artist-in-residence on the Limehurst estate in Oldham since 2016, they have also completed residencies for Kahoon Projects and the Nasty Women International Art Prize and have exhibited work at galleries across the UK.
