Highlights

Assimilate, 2024 by Thomas Griffiths

Black metallic pvc, birch ply, flexi ply, foam, adhesive, steel, steel tubes, metal fixings.

A Phantom Limb, 2020 by Eleanor Duffin

These elements are extensions of an ongoing project, titled Phantoms of Form, which takes as its central point the idea of the “other” woman. The protagonist is a female figure, who is occupied with material investigation and is a composite of a number of historical female artists and designers. She is a ghost, a shadow, She is there but not present. The life and designs of these figures are used in collaboration with Eleanor’s own work, and the project oscillates between auto and fan fiction.

This chapter of the project, titled A Phantom Limb, focused on a series of letters written by Eleanor to the artist Barbara Hepworth, following a visit to Hepworth’s studio in October 2018. Preoccupied with the garden planted by Hepworth at the studio, the research for this show began by focusing on Hepworth’s use of the garden as an exterior work space. In tandem to this interest, Eleanor documented the demise of her own house plants slowly beginning to die. A second element in the research is a bronze cast made by Hepworth of her left hand. Eleanor’s curiosity here is in Hepworth creating such a figurative object, speculating if it is an act of somehow othering the self.

Breaking Barriers 2, 2022 by Fae Kilburn

Part of the Layers of Vision exhibition and commission from Shape Arts and Kings College London. An A3 etching on zinc, a close-up portrait of a visually impaired female, with quotes from other blind and partially sighted people layered over the top.

The portrait and letters etched black are rough to touch and the un-etched areas are smooth, cold and shiny offering visual and tactile contrast. I felt it was important to have a smaller version of ‘Breaking Barriers’ on a material that offered high visual and tactile contrast and enabled visitors to get up close and touch the entire piece. The piece is intentionally distressed echoing the visual distortion of my sight loss at the time.

Barley I, 2024 by Jeremy Stiff

This sculpture is abstracted from a grain of barley. It is magnified approximately 70 times and simplified a little. Seeds and nuts have been a theme I often return to, I find their nuggety forms alluring and mysterious.