A street view of a gallery space with artwork visible in the windows. There are people gathered outside standing in groups talking. The photograph is flanked by two trees on the left and right of the image.

Artist-led

Artist-led: Traction

An ongoing series profiling artist-led initiatives and groups in the South West. This month we are celebrating Traction.

Posted

26/08/25

Can you tell us about your Traction, who you are and what do you do?

Traction is a project space developed and run by artist/curator Erika Cann, supported and housed within Positive Light Projects (PLP), on Exeter’s Sidwell Street. Set in the left hand side of the building's large street-facing windows, the gallery provides a flexible space to test new ideas and present work in all formats, in a 24/7 accessible location.

The gallery's focus is to develop ideas and to provide experience and support for emerging artists, showcasing high quality, critically engaged, contemporary visual art to a diverse audience in Exeter city centre.

CREDIT

A photograph of the outside of a commercial building, which has a large window. In the window, artworks are presented attached or on top of large which plinths, including a colourful hanging fabric, a photographic print, a looping thin green sculpture and various objects. There is a white column in the foreground on the image, and a doorway to the building can be seen on the right.

CREDIT

Can you tell us why you set up and why Traction is important in the context that you are working in?

I’m interested in DIY alternative galleries such as notice boards and pop-up spaces because they provide an exciting and unusual context for artists to work in, while also creating interventions in public spaces and accessible ways to engage with contemporary art. PLP had a disused kitchen/play room, so I took the opportunity to activate a space along a street of mostly vacant shop windows. Artist-led projects have this flexibility to work with what’s already there and make something happen with very little, and I hope it’s as much an interesting space for artists to test new ideas as it is for people who walk past it!

A photograph of an art installation, viewed through a window from outside a building. The installation consists of three large white plinths which display artworks including textile objects, black and white photographic prints and a text work. It is dark outside and the installation is lit so it can be viewed.

CREDIT

Can you tell us about what you are currently working on and if you have any projects coming up you’d like to share with our network?

The current exhibition Still is a new body of work by Lucie Sivier-Voller, which investigates the flow of time through her dual practices in painting and dance. Lucie is currently studying at UAL and was awarded the exhibition at the end of her Foundation Course at Exeter College last year.

Opening on 19 September (Preview at 6pm - 8pm, everyone welcome!) isToo Close to Home by Zoë Whatley. This is a new cross-site exhibition (a first for Traction!) with Gallery333 at Exeter Phoenix, another alternative gallery space in the city, and it explores aliens as a vessel to examine ideas of community, exclusion and escapism through playful sculptural installations.

Can you describe what sort of space you run out of / the context of where you run your space/project from and how you operate / are funded?

There are three moveable walls in the window that act as the gallery space, and the room behind it is hired out by PLP to various communities for meetings and workshops, but we also use it for our opening evenings. Positive Light Projects is a not for profit organisation using the visual arts to engage and inspire a diverse range of audiences, with a focus on and strong belief in community based, socially engaged creative practice. Traction is supported by PLP through the use of the space, but otherwise is not currently funded, and is run on a voluntary basis.