Behind The Crit

I'm Jo Hepburn, sculptor, educator, and the founding force behind The Crit Collective + 87a CRITS.

I started The Crit Collective because I couldn’t find what I needed: a local space to think critically, to test ideas, to take risks, and to go deep. After years of making in isolation, and during a pivotal residency at The Wilson Art Gallery and Museum, I began laying the groundwork for what has become 87a CRITS, a platform built from the ground up for serious contemporary practitioners who want more than polite nods.

My sculptural practice is led by materials that are fragile, forgotten, and full of contradiction: papier-mâché, carpet, tape, found objects. I use them to explore the body as both structure and suggestion, surface and absence. Performance, absurdity, and precarity are central tools. I’m interested in what materials can articulate when language falls short. Making is not just process, it’s a mode of thinking. A way to probe unstable systems, surface tension and doubt, and to hold space for the quiet force of things not built to last.

87a CRITS is a space for people making brave, strange, urgent work. It’s for serious practice and ambitious questions, where things can be tested, not just shown.
It’s not an art club. Not a drop-in. Not a place for ego.
It’s for those seeking critical distance, who believe in their work enough to put it under pressure.
Real generosity, deep thinking, collective momentum.

Click the link below to find out more about Jo's work: