TRS INTERVIEW: MArginalia Collective

In celebration of Interlude opening at TRS, we turn the spotlight on Marginalia Collective, a cohort of Liverpool based artists led by Elodie Horsewell, India Clarke and Jessie Birkett.

Interlude follows up their inaugural 2024 pop up exhibition Prelude, showing on a larger scale, with six emerging artists exploring highly personal themes and ideas, through mixed mediums including painting, sound works, sculpture, poetry and textiles.

The Collective also discuss the power of community built spaces like TRS, how the current climate has shaped and inspired their artwork, and the hopes and dreams they have for the future.

Interlude showing at TRS. 27th - 28th March 2025.

How did the Collective begin? What inspired you to collaborate and curate an exhibition together?

The three of us are currently students, and share a university studio space. We were drawn together naturally by our shared passion for creating, as well as the aesthetic and conceptual correlations between our work. In the studio, we look to each other for support and criticism, and will often find this in impromptu discussions about our work. Everything we’re doing now is built on the time that we’ve devoted to each other, both as friends and as artists.

Last year, we took our first step into exhibition making with Prelude, a pop up exhibition we produced in just a month, featuring only the three of us. We saw the process as an opportunity to learn, and now with every consecutive project we want to grow our ambition.

Installation views of Prelude, 2025, A pop-up exhibition by Marginalia Collective

For Interlude, we've invited three other artists: Ren Yeates Black, Beatrice Gillard and Erin Shawe. We invited them because their work inspired us, and because we felt their practices held common ground with ours. We are really devoted to collaboration as a methodology. Through working together and lifting each other up, we believe we can achieve something more exciting, dynamic and ambitious than anything we might produce on our own.

Interlude explores, “heartbreak, memory and self actualisation…” Can you elaborate on these themes and how the audience might interpret them in the artworks?

Through Interlude’s production process, through lines of memory, personal growth and obscurity have organically emerged. Much of the work in the show explores deeply personal experiences, but in a language which defies full comprehension in order to protect both artist and viewer.

Ren’s installation and Beatrice’s paintings reflect on loss and memory in a language that is not prescriptive or oversimplified, but instead atmospheric and discursive. India’s painting speaks of dissociation, grief and the politics of representation through surreal, ritual imagery and symbolic narrative.

Ren Yeates Black, Chelsea Morning, 2025, Installation view,

We're all young artists, who have grown up during a period of economic decline, punctuated by austerity, polarised politics and cuts to arts funding. We're finding ourselves, both as people and as artists, in the midst of this climate, and our work is reflective of that reality. Erin’s work dances between the absurd and the personal, the critical and the humorous, while exploring Northern Ireland’s socio - politics. Jessie’s allegorical sculpture speaks of the isolation they feel from the earth, and their relationship to the damage our planet faces under extractivism and capitalism. Elodie’s work embodies neuroqueer self actualisation through poetic storytelling and metaphor, and communicates personal experiences of trans healthcare in a time of increasing hostility towards trans people. 

The work in the show is at times vulnerable, at times political, but it is also optimistic. We think that the show’s vulnerability reflects how we provide a safe space for each other. It exemplifies our belief in art as a tool for healing, personal expression and bringing about positive change.

Elodie Horsewell, A figment, 2025, Poem.

What would you like the audience to take away from the exhibition?

We hope that Interlude invites audiences to be slow and attentive. We’d like viewers to feel that they can closely engage with the lived experiences, socio-cultural research and alternative perspectives held within the artworks. It’s our aspiration that Interlude will encourage people to consider new perspectives, or to research new ideas. 

Hopefully Erin’s work will lead people to research further about Northern Irish politics. Maybe Elodie’s work will provide insight into trans identity and healthcare that people wouldn’t otherwise have had. Perhaps Jessie’s work will encourage people to consider their psycho geography and their place in the natural world. 

Mostly though, we’d just like people to enjoy themselves, and to see something that they’ll remember - that will linger in their minds for a while.

 Erin Shawe, FLEG!, 2024, Applique collage on fabric.

You describe Interlude as offering, ‘a moment of stillness’ away from the, ‘over stimulation of the Internet age…’ This is a really interesting concept, how do you explore it through the works, individually or collectively?

Even though Interlude is quite engaged with political and personal subject matters, we think it’s quite an escapist show. As we said before, the show’s heavier stories are being told in protective languages like allegory, humour and sensory awe. We are reflecting on real world issues through a level of escapism. We hope that the escapist methodologies at play allow viewers a moment of quiet consideration which is rare during the information age. 

The artworks themselves reflect an investment of time and consideration through their material. Interlude features hand coiled clay pots, oil paintings on canvas, durational sound works, carefully constructed sculptures, hand stitched textiles and more.

Previously, we spoke about the culture we exist within as artists, and that we grew up in. It’s a capitalist, fast culture which devalues slow methods of production, collaboration, and creating for reasons other than generating profit. We hope Interlude subverts that culture in some way, thus offering people a momentary break from it. 

Jessie Birkett, Excerpt from In her potted belly she carries her breakfast, the soft insides of the spiky durian fruit, peeled how her mother taught her. 2025, Prose.

TRS is a voluntary led studio which aims to support emerging artists, how do you see your Collective evolving in the city, and is there anything more you feel could be done in the local community to develop artists?

Marginalia’s future isn’t set in stone, but our current goal is to keep working together, growing our ambitions and growing our skill sets. Interlude is bigger and more ambitious than our first exhibition, Prelude. We want to keep doing bigger and more ambitious things in Liverpool, and we want to collaborate with more people.

Systemic change would need to happen for artists to feel truly supported. Arts education needs to be invested in and improved. Institutions need to do more to facilitate for artists: especially those of us that are disabled, queer, women, and people of colour. 

In the meantime though, we see community building and collectivisation as methods of survival for the current climate. We really value self organisation as a way of working that supports the building of this community. There’s something really special about self organised and community orientated arts, about people gathering together at exhibition openings, zine launches, and poetry nights to celebrate each other's creativity.

We feel privileged to be in arts education. We feel privileged to be able to organise things like Interlude. We are so lucky that right now we get given some time to create. Not everyone has those opportunities and that is an injustice.

Beatrice Gillard, How May A Soliloquy Blow Through The Window? 2024, Oil on antique lace tablecloth.

India Clarke Cold crested honey beetles… 2024, Oil on canvas.

What is next for the Collective after this exhibition?

Next year we want to do a bigger show, with an open call. We’re not sure when, or what. We just know we want it to be more ambitious. We’d like to broaden our presence in the scene and we’d love to work with more people. We’re also hoping to make a website, but for now you can keep up with us on Instagram at @marginalia.collective, as well as on our personal accounts @riottitz, @artistintheforest and @elodiehorsewell.

Interlude opens on Thursday 27th March - Friday 28th March 2025 at The Royal Standard.