Join us for an collective reading event connected to artist Sean Roy Parker’s publication In Your Own Time.

IN YOUR OWN TIME

Join us for an open read-through and critical chat to discuss Sean Roy Parker's publication 'In Your Own Time'.

Artist and writer Sean Roy Parker launches his new publication In Your Own Time: Artist as Witness to Mutual Aid Disguised as Social Care, which has been acquired by Strange Field as a caretaker organisation. We invite you to an open read-through and critical chat to discuss the themes of the zine and Roy's creative process.

In Your Own Time: Artist as Witness to Mutual Aid Disguised as Social Care is a self-published collection of experimental poems and critical reportage by artist Sean Roy Parker, written while digesting the complexity and hypocrisy of the position ‘Socially-Engaged Artists’ are often held by their employers in relation to marginalised groups whilst unable to meet their own needs. This project captures the ambience of a welfare system in chaos, and the affect of disparities imbued by cultural funding on its subjects. The artist was in residence at Erith Food Bank, south east London, when it was abruptly closed in May 2025.

IYOT’s design language is informed by DIY zines and activist pamphlets unearthed during research trips to anarchist archives and community libraries across Britain, including Sparrow’s Nest (Nottingham), 56a Infoshop (London), 1-in-12 Club (Bradford). Designer Lu Fraser’s multivocal approach blends ephemera from Parker’s visits to the food bank with found archival material and scavenged digital whimsy, as well as original drawings. It was edited by writer and facilitator Priya Jay, and printed in risography by Pagemasters in London.

*This session, exhibition and publication contains themes of material hardship and mental health.

Sean Roy Parker is an artist and food researcher living between Derbyshire UK and Vilnius LT. Through spending deep time connecting with (beyond)human beings through various strands of slow primary research —wild food, walking, eating, fermentation, composting, writing— Roy non-judgementally observes interwoven ecologies resisting capitalocentric frameworks and immerses himself in the undergrowth alliance. Roy spends time in artist residencies across Europe finding (dis)harmony in domestic community and promoting food as cultural infrastructure that supports artistic production. In 2024 he published his first poetry collection, 'stewarding' with Monitor Books (London) and was awarded a Paul Hamlyn Foundation visual artist award.

Description supplied by the event organiser.