Interviews with Artists
Maya Rose Edwards
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Interview by Jessica Bennett
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Published in September 2026
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Aftercrop, installation view, Paradise Works, Salford, 2026. Image by Michael Pollard.
To begin, can you tell us a little about yourself and your artistic practice?
I am an interdisciplinary artist working across sculptural assemblage, installation and live-action research. My practice explores place-based culture and its capacity to embed communities within landscapes and social ecosystems. Through collaborations with farmers, archivists, hedgelayers, sailors, children and other knowledge-makers often excluded from contemporary art contexts.
I also investigate built environments, constructed identities, forgotten cultures and acts of landmarking. Central to my work is a commitment to creative access, positioning everyday labour, vernacular knowledge and material histories within contemporary art contexts without losing their specificity.
You describe your practice as being rooted in “place-based culture”. What does place mean to you, and how does it become part of your work?
I enjoy using found objects, salvage materials, and assemblage. The work often traces links between built environments and identity. It examines how industrial and cultural remnants continue to shape communities and landscapes, and how sculpture can express collective reorientation through social and ecological ruin.
Aftercrop, installation view, Paradise Works, Salford, 2026. Image by Michael Pollard.
What are the ideas and questions that continue to drive your work?
I approach agriculture and industry as extended forms of land art: sites where labour, resistance, and identity take material shape. I am interested in how traces of past cultural practices, industries and communities continue to shape places and our relationships to them. I’m interested in queer and non-human experiences of place or ‘placelessness’, belonging and adaptation through the lens of ruin, detritus and social change.
You use the word “placelessness”, which feels particularly interesting alongside your interest in belonging. What does placelessness mean to you, and how does it sit alongside your interest in place and community?
My socially engaged work is a driver for a lot of my sculptural work and collections. I don’t see the two as separate, they’re constantly feeding one another and it’s that feedback loop that the most interesting things happen in. Trying to make something as close to everyday life and everyday people as possible.
Sometimes that means using objects we all know or interact with and framing them as artworks, or shifting the context of an object or event into an oppositional space, or just teasing the rules of what things and spaces can be used for.
I’m interested in seeing a contemporary arts culture where world famous artworks tour tiny village halls, and where everyday peoples crafts and collections are displayed in massive world famous institutions. Only then can we begin to experience the actual power of this stuff and decentre the exhibition. I’m always trying to play my part in that.
Aftercrop, installation view, Paradise Works, Salford, 2026. Image by Michael Pollard.
What was the starting point for Aftercrop? Was there a particular experience, place or question that led to the exhibition?
I’ve been working in rural places across the UK on socially engaged, live and participatory projects (whatever you want to call them!) for a number of years now. That’s given me a specific insight into how these landscapes are shifting and how this is affecting rural people and rural cultures. I’ve been wanting to explore the darker side of this for some time as I am often witnessing it close up.
… but Aftercrop itself came to be because of the first weathervane in the collection. I have notifications on facebook marketplace for anything that is listed as ‘miscellaneous.’ One day a roofer who was fixing Edinburgh Cathedral listed the old weathervane arrow for free as he had been told to scrap it.
This directionless arrow as a totem of rural folk art and British nostalgia that no longer had the wind behind really embodied all of my thinking, and the show was really built from there.
Your work asks us to look beyond the familiar image of the British countryside. What interests you about rural landscapes and cultures, and what do you think the idea of the “rural idyll” can hide?
There’s a specific ‘museumification’ of the countryside, where when we think of rural places, we are thinking about the past. There are certain invisible restrictions on these places that keep them separate from contemporary society. That keeps them in this perfect glass case, only fit for holiday homes or brief tourist destinations. This is the kind of control that leads to high levels of poverty, lack of public services, young people feeling they must move away, conservative ideas, etc.
Aftercrop, installation view, Paradise Works, Salford, 2026. Image by Michael Pollard.
When we imagine rural futures, are they villages of second home owners only occupied for 2 months of the year? Is every farm only solar or data-based? Is it entirely a national park that closes at 5pm? What do we lose if this is the case?
These are the big questions that I want the exhibition to ask about these huge cultural shifts that are happening in Britain and what our agricultural and rural histories can teach us about connection to land and one another before it is lost forever.
You work closely with farmers, stonemasons and hedgelayers. How have these collaborations shaped your practice and the way you think about place?
These are the people who are the true artisans of our time. Historically skilled place based workers whose trades may die with them, and with that, a wealth of knowledge that simply cannot be replaced.
As an artist I never expect to know it all, or be able to replicate this work, because it’s honed over generations. I am continually passionate about collaborating with these experts, and platforming their skills into contemporary visual art contexts. It adds another layer to the physical materials themselves, when the objects created are ‘real.’ I want to share that experience of being celebrated for a craft or artwork with people who otherwise rarely get that chance.
It’s really this knowledge that creates a ‘place’ or what we understand of it, these are the people actively adapting landscapes in a way that affects how we all are able to live in it or move through it. It’s more active than any artwork could ever be. As a queer artist from a working-class rural background, I am committed to artist-led practice, alternative arts economies and expanding access to contemporary art.
Aftercrop, installation view, Paradise Works, Salford, 2026. Image by Michael Pollard.
Labour and traditional forms of knowledge are important within your work. What do you think we risk losing as places and ways of living continue to change?
As I said above, rural Britain is a ruin. We no longer have our agricultural histories or industries in a way that we once did. This work and shared knowledge of place was what unionised communities and thus created culture itself. That’s what we are losing.
I’m not saying I want to send everyone back down the pits, but the connection to land and one another that comes from a shared identity through labour is extremely politically powerful.
Yes I agree that this is something we have lost. On a more wider note: Aftercrop responds to ecological crisis, globalisation and rapid technological growth. How do you see these forces affecting rural communities and landscapes today?
I am interested in how damaged and discarded materials hold layered histories and, in their broken forms, reflect modernisation, ecological loss, and shifting relationships to land. I care deeply about what cultural forms and social relations remain possible within the ruin of the 21st century.
Referencing a second, unexpected crop following harvest, Aftercrop considers ruin as a space of future placemaking and the lives shaped in the shadow of relentless improvement and land exploitation.
You’ve spoken about place as something that is constantly changing. What are you seeing happening to rural communities and the relationships people have with the places they call home?
I don’t want to speak on behalf of anyone, but in my own home town where I grew up I see less and less young people. I see rising fascism and class divides in communities that were once more connected.
People either stay forever and perpetuate the same cycles, or leave as soon as they can and never come back. Common land or small farms are bought out by massive global companies that don’t respect the land or communities living on it. Holiday lets and second home owners from down South drive up house prices and displace communities.
The local knowledge of places is lost and with it, an increasing disregard for the land itself and our reliance on it. Rural communities become more and more suspicious of incomers and divided in what should be a shared fight for survival.
Aftercrop, installation view, Paradise Works, Salford, 2026. Image by Michael Pollard.
The title Aftercrop suggests something that remains after a harvest. What does the idea of what is left behind mean to you within this exhibition, and what might still be possible in its aftermath?
It’s a political show that aims to unearth the darker sides of rural contemporary life, but there is so much humour through it. I want it to make people think about what this myth of the British rural idyll actually means to us, as descendants of agriculture. As a society facing displacement, migration, lack of community connection, shifts in culture.
Where else other than the countryside could you feel safe leaving your door open at night? Where do you know your neighbour as a friend? Where is there a culture of sharing and regular community events throughout the calendar year? Through the museumification of these spaces and all the damage that causes, what actually remains of the ‘past’ that is integral to our collective futures?
Unions, third spaces, commons, non monetary exchange, land-based knowledge, respect for environments and ecosystems, etc. This is the aftercrop that remains.
Finally, what advice would you give to young artists who are interested in making work about place, communities and the world around them?
I truly believe in the current climate that art schools should be encouraging young artists to embed themselves into communities and break from the mould of insular working and ‘high art’ bullshit. Everyone who cares about the arts enough to pursue them, was once given permission to by someone else. Someone who told them that they had something worth saying.
It is the collective responsibility of all artists and institutions to start sharing that permission outside of themselves.
I love this so much! Use your voice and creativity! What does that look like in practice for an artist who is just starting out?
It can begin so small. Ask someone at the corner shop what colour the background of your painting should be. Listen to people when they share their creative ideas with you and ask them how you can help.
Don’t ever be afraid to ask for a favour as long as you’re prepared to offer one in return. People are so disempowered in their own creativity, most adults won't even pick up a pencil when you ask them to draw something. That is not an accident. Creative work of all flavours is an extremely powerful force towards community connection and what's needed to imagine potential futures. The more that is gatekept for the 1%, the more we all have to lose.
So talk about your silly ideas, find time to share them with the most unexpected people in your life and in the place where you live. Ask for forgiveness rather than permission and remember that all places and spaces are created by someone. Tread carefully and with kindness. Fight the good fight.
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Aftercrop is on until 4th October at Paradise Works, Salford, Manchester.
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mayaroseedwards.com
︎ @maya_r0se
︎ @mre_arts
︎ @jessicabennett_art
paradise-works.com
︎ @paradiseworks_
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If you like this why not read our interview with Earl Gibson.
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