Philippa Lawrence
Bristol, BS1 6UX
Professor Lesley Millar writes in Cloth & Memory {2}, 2013: ‘Whatever Philippa Lawrence does, it is never what one expects. As an artist specialising in site-specific work, her relationship with pla
I have a diverse practice which embraces land and environmental art, the use of textiles in a fine art context, and the relationship between art, craft and design. My philosophy is one of learning through making which sees me engaged with teaching as a Principal Lecturer on the BA (hons) Artist, Designer: Maker course at Cardiff School of Art & Design.
Since 2003 my practice has been primarily site-responsive, concerned with issues related to mans’ relationship to land, nature and place. These issues revolve around boundaries, land use, land ownership and an increasing concern with imposed limitations, and an encroachment on our wild spaces - both the public and geographic and the private and internal. I am especially interested in the potential for the language of textiles to connect people to place.
Natural or wild spaces are aligned to our unconscious, and untamed, unknown parts of our minds and psyche and these ideas are key to my thinking and making.
Work pivots on material exploration, drawing out a material’s ability to carry metaphor and speak of human experience, and in a positioning of materials to assist an understanding of, or an analysis of site and a re-activation of space.
Recently maps have been cut and installed as a diagram of atoms around a nucleus – an exploration of the common sites we share and inhabit. An atlas has been cut into, to create a ‘book of tears’. Silver leafed bulbs are left to tarnish as ‘Spent Light’ and 100s of very fine mohair and silk pom poms take on the form of targets and wreaths.
Time is part of my practice; time spent in crafting - whether gilding, binding, sewing or branding, time imparts an energy into the work. I have a particular interest in the multiple, materials, process, techniques and time, site and placement and connection between ideas and people.
My work can be seen as my attempt to assuage some of the feeling of separateness that is part of the human condition. As an artist I feel responsible for sifting and sorting the world and its ‘stuff’ and try to distill a thought or a recognition into a piece that can draw and hold people long enough for them to engage and make their own associations. Work ranges from the monumental to the minute and I bring objects and materials together to draw out new possibilities. I am equally comfortable making work that is intimate and tiny employing similar repetitive action to render larger scale visualisations.
Materials and techniques are diverse. I have always worked in a cross-disciplinary manner and employ gold leaf, found objects, paper, yarn, neon, lava, sheepskin parchment, photography, cloth and glass. The First Law of the Conservation of Energy is something I often think about. In this law Einstein stated that energy is neither created nor destroyed but can only be changed from one state to another. I believe that making work is a transmission of energy, the time spent making a piece lends it a life force or anima.
A desire to take work out of a gallery environment into the public realm and to draw attention to the beauty within the everyday is illustrated most visibly in the project 'Bound', which draws upon key elements within my practice. Bound 2003-2006 Cotton wrapped ancient deceased trees across the 13 old counties of Wales. An ACW Creative Wales Award supported project to identify and wrap an ancient dead tree in each of the 13 old counties of Wales. I wanted to bring art into the natural environment and create something arresting and inspiring. ‘Revealing through Concealing’ this project effected a temporary and effective change in the landscape and drew communities together, bringing renewed awareness of the history of the object. I was interested in questioning boundaries, landmarks and man’s appropriation and use of the land. The project was also about time spent in the landscape - making a physical connection to place. On a personal level the project was very much about taking time to get to know the landscape and people in the local communities. The binding of the trees’ limbs with cloth took tenacity and care. The work became a meditation upon the past, present and future of our selves in relationship to changing landscapes and on the ‘life’ of these sentinel beings.
EDUCATION:
1991-1993 Royal College of Art MA in Fine Art, Printmaking
1987-1990 Norwich School of Art 1st Class BA (Hons) Degree in Fine Art
EMPLOYMENT:
2019 Crafts Council Talent Development Associate
2003 - Principal Lecturer, Cardiff School of Art & Design
2012 - 2016 External Examiner, Drawing and Applied Arts, UWE, Bristol
2001 - 2003 Freelance Project Manager for Wales Arts International and Artworks Wales
Working on Wales@Venice Biennale and Public Art Commissioning.
VISITING & ASSOCIATE LECTURER at many colleges most notably:
2004 - 2013 MA & BA Contemporary Art Practice, Plymouth University
AWARDS & COMMISSIONS:
o 2019 HEFCW SIP Digital Futures. Collaborative partnership project with Digital Agencies in Wales to explore AR, VR & MR technologies in designing shared environments.
o 2018-19 Network for Creative Enterprise Grant. KWMC, Spike Island, Guild, Watershed, UWE
o 2018 Pulling Threads. Artists’ book. Spike Studio fund supported
o 2018 Trace, new site-responsive commission for Hestercombe House
o 2017-18 Disclosures and Dialogues on im(materiality): Hestercombe Unfolds.
o 2016 CREATE award to facilitate a symposium for MA students Re:Activating Space
o 2015 Get Started Award, Cardiff Metropolitan University – to research the language of making of threatened Craft Industries,
o 2013 -14 AiRx, Artists Exchange Residency and exhibition between Singapore and UK
Collaborative project through Singapore International Foundation and British Council, working with architect Randy Chan on a work for Singapore Botanic Gardens.
o 2013 SEED funding to research the textile industry in Bradford and Saltaire
Research and exhibition in which I studied the lost language and dying textile trade in Bradford.
o 2013 ‘Darning the Land: Sewn’, Waddesdon Manor, Aylesbury
Invitation to research the textile archive, design the carpet bed & a 470m planting of wild flowers.
o 2012 HEFCW SIP to develop links with Waddesdons Manor, Aylesbury
o 2011 ‘Bound V-57’, Nature Unframed, Morton Arboretum
o 2011 ‘Darning the Land: Seam’, re-place main commission for Derbyshire
o 2011 ‘Barcode FB814’, Mortimer Forest, ACE Rural Commissioning Programme
o 2009-10 ‘Bound, Croft’, Tell it to the Trees, Croft Castle, Meadow Arts Commission
o 2008 Welsh Artist of the Year. St Davids Hall, Cardiff
o 2006 Production Grant for Solo Exhibition, Arts Council of Wales
o 2003 Commission for Explorations, National Botanic Garden of Wales
o 2003 Creative Wales Award. Arts Council of Wales
o 2000 Individual Artists’ Bursary, Arts Council of Wales
o 1998 Oppenheim John-Downes Memorial Award
o 1993 IBM Art in Technology Award
o 1992 Henry Moore Foundation Scholarship, Royal College of Art
INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS:
2013-14 Angles of Incidence Singapore Botanic Garden & Inner Temple, London
2014 A Million Trees for New York Grand Central Station & High Line, New York, USA
2014 Encounters at the Edge of the Forest University of Illinois, Chicago, USA
2013 Cloth & Memory {2} Salts Mill, Saltaire
2011 – 2012 Bite-Size: Miniature Textiles from Japan and the UK
Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, London; GalleryGallery, Kyoto, Japan; Nagoya University of Arts and Science, Japan
2011 Nature Unframed Morton Arboretum, Chicago. USA
2006 Sense in Place Site-ations, Reykjavik, Iceland
2005 Anima B312, Montreal, Canada
2005 Philippa Lawrence & Reiko Aoyagi House of Art, Cseke Budejovice Czech Republic
2001 Glow Artspace, Sydney, Australia
2000 In Our Hands 5th International Soft Sculpture Exhibition, Kyoto
1996-8 Revelation Maidstone Gallery, Leighton House, Barbican & Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan
SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
2006-7 Philippa Lawrence Oriel Davies, Newtown & Glynn Vivian, Swansea
2001 Glow Glynn Vivian Museum & Art Gallery, Swansea
SELECTED NATIONAL GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
2019 The Clearing bo.lee, London
2018-19 Materiality: Provisional States Hestercombe Gallery, Cheddon Fitzpaine
2018 Whispering Colour bo.lee, London
2018 250th Summer Exhibition Royal Academy of Art
2018 Out of Site Spike Open, Bristol
2017-18 Nature’s Alchemy bo.lee, London
2017-18 A Darker Thread Oriel Myrddin, Ruthin Crafts Centre
2013 Cloth and Memory 2 Salts Mill, Saltaire
2012 Sub-Woofer Spike Island, Bristol
2010 Celebrating Paper Royal West Academy, Bristol
2009-10 Tell it to the Trees Meadow Arts, Croft Castle, Leominster
2008 Land Wales Millennium Centre
2008 Welsh Artist of the Year St Davids Hall, Cardiff (Winner)
2008 Through the Lens Invited Artist, RWA, Bristol
2004 Mostyn Open Oriel Mostyn, Llandudno
2003 Explorations National Botanic Garden of Wales
2003 Insiders Oriel Davies and tour
2002 Like Gold Dust Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham
2002 Ffresh 3 Chapter & G39, Cardiff
2000 Purchase Prize University of Glamorgan
1996-8 Art Textiles 1 Bury St Edmunds Art Gallery & tour
CONFERENCES:
Lawrence, P (2019) Materiality: Disclosed symposium with Irish poet and academic Cherry Smyth who wrote the exhibition catalogue essay. Sarah Bennett, Megan Calver and Philippa Lawrence spoke about approaches to making work born from extensive research for the site-based exhibition Materiality: Provisional States. February 2019. Hestercombe House.
Lawrence, P (2018) BEING HERE & BEING THERE: PULLING THREADS presented as part of Dialogues and Disclosures onim(materiality): Hestercombe Unfolds. September 2018. Hestercombe House.
Lawrence, P (2016) Re:Activating Space. Paper delivered at symposium conceived and organised by Philippa Lawrence and Dr. Natasha Mayo. A series of invited speakers, presentations and workshops for Masters Students to experience a creative maker space. Sept 2016. Cardiff School of Art & Design.
Lawrence, P (2014) Looking at Lace: Another Kind of Border presented at the Lace Symposium at Waddesdon Manor, Aylesbury, September 2014. Waddesdon Manor
Lawrence, P (2012) ‘Bound; the use of cloth as interface; exploring boundaries and concepts in relation to site and place’ presented at Outside’: Activating Cloth to Enhance the Way We Live, University of Huddersfield ,?23 January 2012. Published by Cambridge Scholars in 2014.
PUBLICATIONS & REVIEWS:
Craft Magazine Maker in Focus, May 2013
Cloth & Memory {2} UCA, ISBN: 978-0-9516950-7-4
Bite-Size UCA, ISBN: 978-0-9564160-9-4.
Embroidery Magazine Article by Dr Jessica Hemmings: June 2008
Breaking Ground Cywaith Cymru & Seren, 2007. ISBN: 1854113410
Site-ations. Sense in Place UWIC, 2007. ISBN: 978-1-905617-53-1
Re-imaging Wales WAI & Seren, 2006. ISBN: 1854114069
Philippa Lawrence Oriel Davies, 2006. ISBN: 187079799
Reiko Aoyagi & Philippa Lawrence House of Art, Cseke Budejovice. Catalogue 2006
Anima G39, Cardiff, Wales & B312, Montreal, Canada 2005
14th Mostyn Open Oriel Mostyn. Exhibition catalogue. 2004
Insiders Oriel Davies Touring Exhibition Catalogue. 2004
Made in Wales Object Magazine, Australia. Issue 43. 2003
Explorations Cywaith Cymru. Catalogue.2003
Imaging Wales WAI. Publication 2003. ISBN: 9781854113498
Like Gold Dust Angel Row Gallery. Catalogue. 2002 ISBN:0905634578
Artist’s Story Artists’ Newsletter. November 2001
Art Textiles Exhibition catalogue. 1996. ISBN: 0952825600
Revelation Maidstone Gallery Exhibition catalogue. 1996
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