Glen The Maker

Glen The Maker UK Multi-disciplinary Artist | CEO of the Pointless Labour Company 🧱

End of Year Review - Was a good one 👌
A year of making things happen. Here are some highlights from projects, exhibition...
31/12/2025

End of Year Review - Was a good one 👌

A year of making things happen. Here are some highlights from projects, exhibitions, and all the other fun arty bits.

2: WYLFWT 2.0 on shoot day - marking the end of my residency at Leeds Arts University and the completion of my first kinetic sculpture.

3: Running workshop sessions in Bradford throughout the year, translating lived experiences of work and life into some genuinely brilliant sculptures.

4: Fire Exit (2025) - a response to starting my role at Assembly House last year. Putting up endless fire-exit signage around the studio eventually led to this work.

5: A selection of artist shots by James that didn’t quite squeeze in elsewhere. Every great photo this year has come from this legend.

6: Sand Timer Conveyor (2025) standing tall on its new plinth. An absolute puzzle to get here, but well worth it.

7: Seeing great art with even better people - mostly their work, shown in some brilliant exhibitions.

8: Knights of the Round Table (2025) finally finished after being in progress for over two years.

9: Two amazing weeks installing the Nisbet Road Tailor Shop exhibition with Archie Brooks - met great people and properly grafted for the first time this year.

10: Ian modelling the drone beautifully at Kirkstall Art Trail. Possibly the wettest day imaginable for an outdoor performance with the Pointless Labour Company.

11: York St John’s year-long residency kicked off in October. Excited to dive into the facilities and make two new kinetic sculptures this year - let’s gooo!

12: The AA2A York St John’s cohort, ready for a year of making!!

13: Deep in the workshop working on WYLFWT? 2.0 - pre-weld all clamped and ready to go. Missing that fixture table… just want it back 😭

Big plans for 2026.

Very exciting times at GlenTheMaker HQ — see you soon, and love to all ❤️

📸 Images 1,5,6,8 -

19/12/2025

Sand Timer Conveyor (2025)

The conveyor is back in action at Sand Shifters HQ - seven sand timers tipping, resetting, repeating in a constant loop. Fragile rhythms play against cold steel, echoing the balance between working to live and resting only to work again.

Each timer pauses briefly at the top before falling forward - a tiny moment of recharge before the cycle begins again. The piece draws from my years in a 24/7 McDonald’s, where staffing felt like a constant “changing of the guards” and the machine never truly stopped.

Recharge, refuel, deplete, repeat - time moves on, even when the cycle looks the same. And still, every grain falls differently.

Filmed by:

12/12/2025

Sand Shifters (2020)

Finally got round to editing all the footage from Sand Shifters at the BBA Artist Prize 2023 - only took me 2+ years! Five years on, this piece is still shaping everything I make.

Sand Shifters looks at humans as tools and the cycles of work - four performers repeating endurance-based tasks until their movements feel mechanical. A reminder of the routines we fall into, and the value we place on our time.

Knights of the Round Table (Oil on canvas, 180 x 180 cm)Twelve modern-day knights, suited up and armed with card readers...
10/12/2025

Knights of the Round Table (Oil on canvas, 180 x 180 cm)

Twelve modern-day knights, suited up and armed with card readers. A dinner table becomes a clock face, receipts piling at its centre. Knight of the Round Table reframes chivalry for the age of credit and time.

Photography by

Twelve suited men - finance bros, city workers, modern-day knights - gather round a dinner table, locked in the final act of settling the bill. Each grips a card reader with a golden credit card slotted inside, their receipt rolls spilling out and tangling together in a pile at the centre. Seen from above, the scene resembles old poker table paintings and the symmetry of a clock face - twelve figures frozen in ritual, where time and money coil into one.

Painted in bold, cartoon-like colour blocks, the scene shifts from a darkened outer ring to a spotlighted centre, heightening its theatricality.

Tradition and modernity clash here: old codes of nobility reimagined as credit, receipts, and endless transactions. Nobility not by bloodline, but by time, value, and the endless cycle of paying the bill. A satirical yet reverent take on the 21st-century knight - suited, card reader in hand - where receipts replace swords and value is measured in transactions.

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