Joanne Masding

I investigate existing objects and historical artefacts, using making and remaking processes to explore the sensory, bodily experience of the physical world. I make new versions of inaccessible objects that I can feel with my fingers; I want to know things with my body rather than know about things in my head. I use clay, plastic and metal, as well as using text and performance as materials for building sculpture. 

My work is grounded in museum studies research, considering trends to narrativise artifacts that draw engagement away from objects’ physical “isness” located in the sculptural register, into “aboutness” situated immaterially elsewhere.

An extension of the studio, writing allows me to redefine the laws of physics and inhabit inaccessible objects, spaces and processes. My novel-as-artwork, Body of Pieces, follows two female characters as they interact with a series of hard-to-grasp objects within the bowels of a fictional archive.

In 2025 I made solo exhibition The Moveable Scene of the Page at Bluecoat, Liverpool, as part of their season on artist writing. Through sculpture, print and drawing, the works in the exhibition think about the act of speaking and understanding, and use processes of translation as methods for knowing the material world.

Recent exhibitions include: The Moveable Scene of the Page, Bluecoat, Liverpool (2025) (solo); Matter Out of Place, Grand Union, Birmingham (2026); Tree and Leaf, Division of Labour, Salford (2023), Copy Out a New Shoot, Modern Painters New Decorators, Loughborough (2022) (solo); My Kid Could've Done That, Holborne Museum, Bath (2021); In the Peaceful Dome, Bluecoat, Liverpool (2017-18); Touche Eclat, Workplace, Gateshead (2017); Plaster Ghost Finger Cast, The New Art Gallery, Walsall (2017) (solo); image music text, IMT Gallery, London (2016); stuffs wander off, a shape steps in, Two Queens, Leicester (2016) (solo). 

I have undertaken residencies with organisations including: 501 Artspace, Chongqing, China, Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin, Ireland, Research and Cultural Collections at University of Birmingham, Leicestershire Museums Collections. Permanent commission Flimsy Signals, made for developers Bruntwood, launched in summer 2018, and 'Make Future Village History', a public artwork for a new housing development in Cardiff, with Persimmon Homes and Studio Response launched in 2021. I was awarded a fellowship with John Feeney Charitable Trust in 2016-17 and in 2020 I received by nomination an Artist Award from Henry Moore Foundation.

I initiated and run Studio Outlet, which sells things made by artists.

I am co-director of Modern Clay, a co-operative ceramics studio in Birmingham, where I make work, undertake ceramics research and production for artists, and use the therapeutic benefits of working with clay in partnership with local charities supporting vulnerable groups.