Gratrix’ work deals with queerness and, or queering; how working with materials, language and space can remain ‘slippery’, experimental, and curious. 

Their Queer, minimal practice explores formal relationships within given or used spaces; the tensions between hard to soft, camp to controlled, formal to frolic play out in the choice and arrangement of materials, interrogating how ‘queer’ is embedded within construction materials such as wood, concrete, metal, and paint.

Looking at how dating apps, such as Grindr, feed into performance anxiety and societal fears of ‘measuring up’, Gratrix creates installations following a strict, formal ‘nine-inch’ rule derived from an intimate line of questioning from a potential match. They reclaim and reframe this question, adopting it as a formal language through which to examine expectation, scale, and nonsense as we navigate spaces in both extravert and clandestine ways.

Gratrix lives and works in Blackpool (UK) and inevitably the specifics of site inform the formal and aesthetic decisions which run through their work.

Gratrix is founding director of Abingdon Studios Ltd (est. 2014) 

list of artists worked with to date:

Iain Andrews, Rachel Ara, Hannah Elizabeth Allen, Abid Aslam, Richard Baker, Mollie Balshaw, Mat Bancroft, Michael Bartlett, Jordan Baseman, Oliver Bliss, Axel Bottenberg, Becky Bowley, Andrew Bracey, Alice Bradshaw, Jack Brown, Christy Burdock, Pavel Büchler & Evangelia Spiliopoulou, Janette Byrne, Laure Carnet, Mike Carney, Ann Carragher, Peter Cartwright, Reuben Cartwright & Isaac Jordan, Jakub Ceglarz, Mike Chavez-Dawson, Daniel Chong, Fernando Holguin-Cereceres, Genevieve Chua, Harry Clayton-Wright, Jo Clements, James Clarkson, Sue Cohen, Ben Cook, Rick Copsey, Bethany Costerd, Sophia Crilly, James Cross, Charlotte Cullen, Lauren Curl, Matt Davies, Charlotte Dawson, Oliver Doe, Joseph Doubtfire, Tina Dempsey, Jez Dolan, Samantha Donnelly, Annabel Dover, Robbie Driessen, Tiago Duarte, Tracey Eastham, Nicola Ellis, Liam Fallon, Daniel Fogarty, Ian Fraser, Andrew Gannon, Hugh Gilmour, Dan Glenister, Tom Godfrey, Fiona Grady, Simon Granell, Dave Griffiths, Lesley Guy, Guildor, David Hancock, Joe Hancock, Shir Handelsman, Tessa Hawkes, Lubaina Himid & Susan Walsh, Rowland Hill, Felicity Holland, Dale Holmes, Ben Hosken-Jones, Mark Houghton, Steph Huang, Thomas Ireland, Candice Jacobs, Marie Jones (Kochi Kochi), Nick Jordan, Juneau Projects, Rijnder Kamerbeek, Nayeoun Kang, Zoe Keenan, Mark Kennard, Clare Kenny, Karen King, Helen Knowles, Elizabeth Kwant, Andrew Lim, Ross McCarry, Keith MacIsaac, David Mackintosh, Enzo Marna, David McCleavy, David Martin, Joanne Masding, Dominic Mason, Jo McGonigal, Colin McGonigle, Liam mertens, Aya Michlin, Claudio Miller, Jason Minsky, Claire Mont Smith, Hayley Morris-Cafiero, Aija Elina Nieminen, Darren Nixon, Joe Fletcher-Orr, Sean Payne, Narbi Price, Tom Railton, Rosanne Robertson, Carole Reed, Olivia Rowland, Emma Rushton & Derek Tyman, Emily Stollery, Stuart Semple, Heidi Schaefer, Andro Semeiko, Richard Shields, Jayne Simpson, Suzanne Smith, Cherry Tennison, Helena Tomlin, Gunhild Thomson, Molly Thomson, Katie Tomlinson, Marianne Walker, Patricia Walsh, Alan Ward, Yu-Chen Wang, Jane Ward, Teresa Wilson, Lisa Wigwam, Steven Wilson, Matt Wilkinson, Charlie Yetton