About Sullivan
Sullivan Alenezi-Bonney is a multidisciplinary artist and designer based in the North East. Sullivan holds a firm belief in the power of the artistic practice to spark change and encourage dialogue between people.
Sullivan works as a freelancer offering various creative services from graphic design and illustration to workshops and curation. He worked on projects that focus on lifting the community and promoting diversity, equality and valuable connections in Sunderland and the North East area. Projects like Working Lass by Pink Collar Gallery, delivering origami workshops at the Vane Gallery alongside the Death Magic exhibition (Sofia Barton), and a teaching/facilitating role with Gen D.
About Sullivan’s MA Practice
My MA work centres on participatory art and how it might connect people by raising them to the status of active participants. In collaboration with Tom Jordan, an MA glass and ceramic student, they examine and create printing tiles inspired by patterns and symbols drawn from North East heritages, including both local and immigrant backgrounds. The Project also seeks to be experimental and innovative in its execution of both outcome and produced tools.
The final artwork will be shaped by participants using printed tiles on paper, each with a different frequency in number to fill the walls and create a mural. Alongside this, a wall will host a conversation about contemporary topics, enabling anonymous debates, discussions, or simply thoughts from participants or active onlookers.
This project seeks to be a beacon in which we try to understand and listen to the local community in order to facilitate better participatory art experiences.
Sullivan featured on the ‘Death Magic’ episode, released back in September 2025, where he shared about his origami workshops based on themes from Sofia Barton’s exhibition - exploring the symbolism of lotus flower, and remembrance.
“It was really good. It's new to me; going from ink on paper or printed medium to origami. I've done origami in the past, but to teach it to people it was new.
So just to have everyone just be on the table, make some origami and just like open up about their beliefs, theories or memories of their loved ones.
[Origami is] perfect for sensitive subjects as well; not pressuring people to create, so they can just do it in their own time with the breathing space.”
Release Date: Sunday 10th September 2025
A Jay Sykes Media podcast