Janet Currier
The sculptures, installations and paintings I make, explore everyday experiences like the joy and messiness of being a mother, the anxiety of sickness and the stress trying to hold it all together in an increasingly precarious world. Although my starting point is often intensely autobiographical, my work examines universal and shared themes of physical vulnerability, care, motherhood, resilience and transformation.
Pattern and repetition and rhythm are a central to my work. Repeated gestures and forms are a metaphor for the diurnal work of looking after others. It’s labour that seems to be on a never ending loop that is constantly overlooked. It is toil that is monotonous but somehow miraculous in its skill ( and it’s love).
The female and maternal body is never far away. Soft sculpture installations suggest flesh that is squashed and compressed. Sometimes the shape of a body, or an imagined internal view is seen in the work. It is most often a body that is under attack, a body being probed, or leaking or somehow not quite able to contain itself or the memories held within.
Recent works reference bodily processes at a microscopic level where cells mutate, viruses multiply, and diseases threaten to engulf. We are reminded of the fragility of our existence, and our interdependence with a multiverse of organisms that we don’t yet understand.
I studied Fine Art at Leeds university and completed my MFA at Goldsmiths in 2017. I received the Warden’s Art Purchase Prize in 2017 and my work is held in various private and public collections, including the Goldsmiths College Collection. I was awarded the first Elephant Residency in 2017 and was shortlisted for the Denton Art Prize in 2021. Recent shows include: Substrate, No Format Gallery London (2018), Waiting Room: Deptford X (2018), After Hours, San Mei Gallery London( 2019); Fuzzy Objects, San Mei Gallery (2020); Hell or High Water, Light Vessel 21, Gravesend, Kent (2020); Denton Art Prize exhibition (2021); Before the moon I am, Hoxton Arches, London (2022), Fetish at Greatorex Street Gallery (2023); It Comes From Inside, Bell House Dulwich (2023) Holding Space, Hospital Rooms, Hauser and Wirth, London (2023) Extempore 24, Tension Fine Art, London (2024)
