About/Contact
Frankie Fathers is a London-based multidisciplinary artist with a strong social arts practice whose work spans installation, sculpture, and film, exploring themes of care and loss. She primarily uses textiles to engage with these ideas, offering a feminist and absurdist perspective. Her practice is both playful and profound, flippant and forceful, creating a visual language that balances the familiar with the fantastical. Recently, her art has become deeply personal as she navigates the emotional complexities of caring for her father, Michael, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2021.
This transition into caregiving has significantly shaped the artist’s practice, forcing her to grapple with the conflicted emotions tied to caring for a loved one whose memory and identity are fading. It has challenged her understanding of memory, loss, and care, prompting her to explore these themes through her work. The act of making has become a way for the artist to articulate the frustration and helplessness she experiences as a caregiver. She has been experimenting with sharing this coping mechanism by collaborating with other carers and charities in the UK and Taiwan.
One of her recent installations, Wigwam for a Goose’s Bridle, directly responds to her father’s deteriorating condition and his obsession with stacking twigs. Michael, once meticulous about arranging wood for his fire, now struggles to recreate the same structures, and his once carefully arranged wood piles have become erratic. This shift reflects the cognitive decline associated with dementia—he can no longer remember how to stack the wood or, at times, even where he sleeps or who she is.
Alongside her individual artistic practice, the artist is also committed to social art practice and fostering community engagement and collaboration. As a co-founder of the Campervan Collective, she works with a group of international experimental artists who met at the Royal College of Art to create public art projects and free workshops that encourage dialogue and connection. Their aim is to use play and humour to build bridges between different perspectives by making art together.
Alongside her art practice, Frankie is also a BAFTA-winning documentary producer/director.
Contact:frankiefathers@gmail.com
EXHIBITIONS
2025: Bow Open 2025: Connections, Nunnery Gallery, London, UK
2025: Wigwam for a Goose’s Bridle, Pier2, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
2024: Future Archaeologies, Camden Art Centre, London
2024: Textile Junction, Electro Studios, Hastings, UK
2024: Ode to She Monster (video), Tate Lates, Tate Modern, London & Genesis Cinema, London
2024: Everything Must Go, Cookhouse Gallery, London
2024: Make Do & Mend, Take Courage Gallery, London
2021: I didn’t Lick it, Bruton Museum, UK
SOCIAL PRACTICE
2025: Camper Van Collective: Woven Festival, Yorkshire, UK
2025: Camper Van Collective: Carnival of CollaborART, The Loop, London, UK
2025: Camper Van Collective: Textile Time Machine workshop, Lightbox Gallery, Woking, UK
2024: Camper Van Collective: After Judy, Hyde Park, London, UK
2024: Camper Van Collective: Ode Art Picnic, Battersea Park, London, UK
2024: Co-founded Campervan Collective to democratise art and make and show art in public spaces
2015-2021 Street artist using the tag Tape_Geek
PERFORMANCE/FILM
2025: Why Don’t you Remember? video and live, Nunnery Gallery, London, UK
2023: Birdwalk, RCA, London, UK
PRESS
Elsie Magazine, Issue 2 (2019), Sticker Stories: Interview with Tape_Geek
ART RESIDENCIES
2025: Pier-2 Artist-in-Residence Program (PAIR), Kaohsiung, Taiwan
2023: Berlin Art Institute/BAI international residency programme, Germany
2015: Yangon Art & Heritage Festival - My Yangon My Home, Myanmar