Give & Takeover - commission series

Molly Erin McCarthy, Dan Guthrie and Rhys Morgan have each been paired with an exhibition/artist in the MIRROR programme, and are all taking a different approach to responding to what a Give & Takeover intervention can be.

The Give & Takeover commission series has been funded by Arts Council England with the support of National Lottery players.

Molly Erin McCarthy is a multimedia artist based in Plymouth, UK. She works predominantly with 3D, digital and interactive media. She sees herself as a scavenger - collecting scraps from all over, forming tales and artifacts from this entangled mix. Her work explores themes of progress & power, questioning what we mean by ‘development’ - who it serves and why.

For Give & Takeover, Molly is creating a series of augmented reality (AR) filters. These AR vignettes will showcase landmarks and objects from Artificial Ruin, a speculative fiction world based on the Rame Peninsula (which is known as The Forgotten Corner of Cornwall).


Dan Guthrie is an artist, researcher and writer whose work often explores representations of Black Britishness, with an interest in examining how they manifest themselves in rural areas.

For Give & Takeover, Dan is developing a new body of work investigating historical and contemporary Black presences and mis-presences in his hometown of Stroud, working across moving image, sculpture and writing. He is looking forward to presenting elements of this at MIRROR in dialogue with Huma Mulji’s upcoming South West Showcase exhibition.

Rhys Morgan is a Plymouth-based queer artist. He graduated Falmouth University in 2014, and has exhibited across the South West and the UK. He is currently undertaking an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, London.

For his commission for Give & Takeover, Rhys will be bringing together members of the LGBTQIA+ community in the South West to form a queer Sea Shanty choir to write and perform a contemporary queer response to the traditional song form. Exploring the idea of community identity and cultural heritage, Rhys is drawing on his experience as a queer person growing up in coastal settings to create a work which disrupts these traditions, so as to find commonality between lived experiences.

GET INVOLVED - Make your own Give & Takeover

MIRROR invites proposals from staff and student groups for their evening ‘Give & Takeover’ event series. Give & Takeover’s can take any form (including temporary exhibitions, performances, talks etc) with the one rule that they must not disturb the exhibition they are responding to and intervening in.

Find out more