Nicky Coutts is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans photography, film, video, and sculpture. Known for her manipulation of found photographs, her work explores transformation, perception, and the relationship between image and belief. Nicky studied at Chelsea College of Art and the Royal College of Art and has exhibited widely across the UK, New Zealand, and Japan. Until spring 2009, she was Fine Art Fellow at Middlesex University and a visiting tutor at the Royal College of Art.
During her VARC residency, Nicky developed several significant projects. Her film Passing Place re-enacted scenes from six classic films in which pivotal moments occur at crossroads — including works by Pasolini, Jarmusch, Zemeckis, Deren, Rosenberg, and Buñuel. These scenes were restaged and filmed at a real crossroads near Highgreen, with local residents performing the roles. The final film will weave these re-enactments together non-sequentially to explore cinematic narrative, coincidence, and place.
In her photographic series Levitations, Nicky referenced historical and artistic depictions of flight and transcendence — from saints such as St Joseph of Cupertino to artists like Yves Klein — capturing moments of attempted elevation between the physical and the spiritual. Change of Heart, another series of painted photographs, transforms images of remote moorland shelters using enamel paints to alter the weather and light, evoking ideas of protection, isolation, and impermanence.
Her installation No One Belongs Here More Than You — named after Miranda July’s novel — takes the form of a roadside ‘cabinet of curiosities’ opposite Highgreen Manor. Containing over 100 small votive objects made by studio visitors in response to the question, “If you had a God, what would you offer?”, the work glows at night with solar-powered light, its backdrop depicting burning fells in trompe l’oeil.
Coutts also collaborated with artist Liz Murray after attending a paranormal event at Kielder Castle. The experience inspired new works including a video, sound pieces, and a ‘Spirit Hut’ installation, featured in their joint exhibition, Is Mary Here Again? (Waygood Gallery, Newcastle, 2009). The project incorporated real recorded voices of mediums and ambient sounds captured from Highgreen Manor’s attic.
Throughout her residency, Nicky led clay workshops with local residents and school groups, producing blindfolded self-portrait heads and votive objects. Over a hundred of these community-made pieces now populate the illuminated cabinet on the moor — a lasting testament to shared imagination, offering, and place.
