W.H.O.A. (2026) is a mail art project comprising twelve typeset letters, screenprinted and typeset envelopes and other printed ephemera. Each month Ross sends a letter to forty subscribers. Beginning in January and ending in December, the project spans a year. The letters are a potted history of encounters and events that have shaped her perspective on making art (for the good and for the bad). They directly reference passages from the 1963 Fluxus artwork Whispered History of Art by Robert Filliou.
Ross expands on Filliou’s original text by narrating her own personal experiences as a female art student, artist and lecturer - spanning the past twenty years.
Heather Ross works as a solo artist and as part of the creative duo ‘Artist A & Artist B’ (with Dr. Jackie Haynes). Her work is multi-disciplinary, encompassing printmaking, painting, sculptural forms, performance and textiles. Her work is often in dialogue with past, historical and archival material which is then edited and re-worked using methods such as re-construction and re-enactment. She studied painting at Gray’s School of Art (2001-05) and taught on the painting course until 2012, when she moved to London to study on the MA Fine Art programme at Chelsea College of Art. She completed a practice-based PhD in 2023 from Newcastle University. Her PhD project focussed on German artist Kurt Schwitters, in particular his final artwork Merz Barn Wall (1947). Ross currently lives and works in Preston, Lancashire. She is Course Leader of the MA Fine Art course at the University of Lancashire and a member of the Birley Studios, Preston.
In 2005 I was delighted to receive the RSA Painting Prize, the Maclaine Watters Medal and the RSA John Kinross Scholarship to Florence. These awards gave me the confidence to continue developing my practice upon leaving my degree course, to travel and make work in dialogue with new places and experiences. This was particularly the case in 2010 when I was the recipient of the RSA Alastair Salvesen Scholarship, which enabled me to travel to Japan for a period of three months – a truly life changing experience.
