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Lesley Hilling

London
Lesley Hilling is an English self taught artist working solely with wood and recycled materials.

My work explores two themes - the exterior, architectural layering of buildings and cities and the interior home space. Each with an emphasis on memory, collective and personal, the passage of time and how it impacts upon our lives. I build collages out of salvaged wood - floorboards, driftwood and furniture is re-worked into new forms - jigsawed and layered with an obsessive joinery. I create something new from objects that had a previously different life. My early work shows an interest in openings, compartments and drawers that can house tiny artifacts of memory - a photograph, a shell - a forgotten treasure. These works take the viewer on a journey. The work has to be interacted with - the opening of doors, the pulling out of drawers - an interplay between what is hidden, what is revealed and what is to be discovered. These pieces have a flat closed plane and openings, doors and drawers allow the viewer to see what is hidden behind. In my most recent work the closed plane has given way to a fretwork of wooden pieces built up in layers that allow glimpses of what lies inside. I imagine lifting the roofs off a row of terrace houses or a block of flats to see how people have transformed their homes and created meaning for themselves making completely personal, an identical space. In my more architectural pieces I make purely structural forms - instead of forgotten treasures secreted within there are layers of greying timber with eroded paint reminding us that people once used, worked and lived with this material. 

 

Solo exhibitions

2015 - In A Silent Way Lesley Hilling & Anders Knutson Knight Webb Gallery SW2

2014 - Under The Sign of The Hourglass 2, Knight Webb Gallery SW2 London 

2013  Lesley Hilling presents The enigmatic World of Joseph Boshier, Standpoint Gallery, Hoxton, London 

2012 - Under The Sign of The Hourglass, Nancy Victor Gallery, W1 London

2007 - Relics, Nancy Victor Gallery, W1 London

Selected Group exhibitions

2015 - ‘Human Nature’ Group Show Centrespace Gallery Bristol

2015 - ‘Human Nature’ Group Show Munroe House Leeds

2015 - Aesthetica Magazine Art Prize long list

2015 - London Art Fair - Knight Webb Gallery

2014 - Human Nature Hoxton Arches

2013 - In The Bleak Mid Winter, Knight Webb Gallery SW2 London

2013 - Sketches of Time,  Knight Webb Gallery SW2 London

2013 - Atlantic Road, Knight Webb Gallery SW2 London

2013 - Creekside Open curated by Paul Noble APT Gallery

2012 - It's A Wonderfull Life, Nancy Victor Galery W1 London

2012 - Wandering Lines, England & Co, W1 London

2008 - Summer Show, England & Co, Westbourne Grove, London 

2003 - Sartorial, England & Co, Westbourne Grove, London

2002 - In The City, England & Co, Westbourne Grove, London

2002 - Unfurnished, Deptford X, Deptford, London

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