I was born in 1973 and grew up in Aotearoa / New Zealand.
I completed a Bachelor of Visual Art majoring in sculpture at ASA in Auckland, New Zealand (now the Visual Arts Department, AUT).
Under the tutorage of James Charlton and Paul Cullen I developed an interest in installation, assemblage, film and time-based art.
In my final year I began to incorporate puppets into my installations and art performances.
In 1997 I studied live animation technique with Ramon Rivero who was Lead Performance Animator for Peter Jackson’s production of The Lord of the Rings.
I created object puppets which I toured within the solo performance Suitcase Circus, and I designed and performed puppetry professionally for theatre, films and music videos in New Zealand, Hong Kong and Australia.
In 2007 I moved to the UK and formed the company Folded Feather, touring Suitcase Circus in the UK and internationally.
In 2011 I co-devised the theatre performance Life Still which premiered at le Théâtre aux Mains Nues in Paris, followed by a run at Suspense London Festival of Puppetry. In 2012 we took the show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Times described Life Still as “magical”. Life Still was a personal creative progression in my approach to objects where the object’s identity is intrinsic within the expressive language.
I continue to share my experiences of working expressively with objects and puppets by teaching in many tertiary institutions including; Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Rose Bruford School of Performing Arts, Mountview, St Marys University, WAC Arts, the London College of Fashion and Little Angel Theatre.
In 2013 I met the artist Dominic Harris and we began to collaborate on a responsive mechanical piece using the butterfly as its subject. The process of creating the artwork “Flight is a Waltz” spanned three years. The mechanism of this brass butterfly precisely synchronises the down stroke, forward tilt and spreading of the wings with a lowering of the head and the effort expressed through a lifting of the abdomen, when the wings rise the tilt inverses, their spread diminishes, and the head and the abdomen return.
Flight is a Waltz was presented at the 2017 Design Basel/Miami Exhibition, supported by six butterfly prototypes and two of Dominics holographic butterfly studies.
I continued to be captivated by mechanisms which express life-like movement and in 2018 turned my attention to another natural subject; the dragonfly.
In 2019 my studies of the dragonfly were presented in the solo exhibition, Imago a Dragonfly in Motion at Circus Gallery, Marylebone. The final study, Dragonfly Imago, uses a plywood “wobble board” base as the mechanical interface between the dragonfly and the viewer. By subtle variation of force and frequency in the depression of this base with their foot, the viewer provokes a wide range of observed dragonfly movements in the piece.
The exhibition was within the 2019 London Design Festival and a panel discussion had me talking alongside Katy Barrett (Curator of Art Collections at the Science Museum, London) and Huai-Ti Lin (Director of Neuromechanics and Bio-Inspired Technologies Laboratory, Imperial College London) about Art and Science working together.
At this time I had became fascinated with mechanical systems which are precarious and specifically how such physical systems seem to breath with their potential for cataclysmic and dramatic transformation. This was timely as in 2020 the Covid pandemic hit. I returned to my found object roots and created the series Systems which are direct explorations of precariousness. The physical here is used to express itself as well as the wider social and the political.
In 2020 I was approached by the artist Ingrid Pollard about a collaboration on the creation of three large kinetic sculptural pieces for her retrospective exhibition Carbon Slowly Turning at MK Gallery, Milton Keynes in 2022. These would become Bow Down and Very Low - 123 and presented me with the opportunity to explore evocative mechanical systems of balance, articulation and collapse on a human scale. Taking an archival UK Government film of the 1950s of a young black girl curtsying as the May Queen in an entirely white English village as the starting point the physicality of these sculptures is analogous to social/cultural/political systems of racial exploitation, subjugation and physical violence.
Ingrid Pollard was shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2022 for Carbon Slowly Turning which has since toured to Turner Contemporary, Margate, and a selection of Art Works from this exhibition, including Bow Down and Very Low - 123, will be shown from October 2022 in the Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Liverpool.
I continued my observational sculptural studies of nature inspired forms and movement, these becoming less figurative and more abstract, gestural explorations of form, colour, moment and response.
From June - July 2022 I had the solo exhibition Suspending Motion in a converted Victorian era engine house at Walthamstow Wetlands. I presented art works spanning eight years, including various butterfly and dragonfly prototypes, Dragonfly Imago, sculptures from the Systems series and more recent abstract responsive works such as Phoenix and Sensory Chain.
In June 2022 my kinetic sculptural study 567 - blue was accepted within the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. I was awarded the Jack Goldhill Award for Sculpture by the Royal Academy for 567 - blue.
I completed a Bachelor of Visual Art majoring in sculpture at ASA in Auckland, New Zealand (now the Visual Arts Department, AUT).
Under the tutorage of James Charlton and Paul Cullen I developed an interest in installation, assemblage, film and time-based art.
In my final year I began to incorporate puppets into my installations and art performances.
In 1997 I studied live animation technique with Ramon Rivero who was Lead Performance Animator for Peter Jackson’s production of The Lord of the Rings.
I created object puppets which I toured within the solo performance Suitcase Circus, and I designed and performed puppetry professionally for theatre, films and music videos in New Zealand, Hong Kong and Australia.
In 2007 I moved to the UK and formed the company Folded Feather, touring Suitcase Circus in the UK and internationally.
In 2011 I co-devised the theatre performance Life Still which premiered at le Théâtre aux Mains Nues in Paris, followed by a run at Suspense London Festival of Puppetry. In 2012 we took the show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Times described Life Still as “magical”. Life Still was a personal creative progression in my approach to objects where the object’s identity is intrinsic within the expressive language.
I continue to share my experiences of working expressively with objects and puppets by teaching in many tertiary institutions including; Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Rose Bruford School of Performing Arts, Mountview, St Marys University, WAC Arts, the London College of Fashion and Little Angel Theatre.
In 2013 I met the artist Dominic Harris and we began to collaborate on a responsive mechanical piece using the butterfly as its subject. The process of creating the artwork “Flight is a Waltz” spanned three years. The mechanism of this brass butterfly precisely synchronises the down stroke, forward tilt and spreading of the wings with a lowering of the head and the effort expressed through a lifting of the abdomen, when the wings rise the tilt inverses, their spread diminishes, and the head and the abdomen return.
Flight is a Waltz was presented at the 2017 Design Basel/Miami Exhibition, supported by six butterfly prototypes and two of Dominics holographic butterfly studies.
I continued to be captivated by mechanisms which express life-like movement and in 2018 turned my attention to another natural subject; the dragonfly.
In 2019 my studies of the dragonfly were presented in the solo exhibition, Imago a Dragonfly in Motion at Circus Gallery, Marylebone. The final study, Dragonfly Imago, uses a plywood “wobble board” base as the mechanical interface between the dragonfly and the viewer. By subtle variation of force and frequency in the depression of this base with their foot, the viewer provokes a wide range of observed dragonfly movements in the piece.
The exhibition was within the 2019 London Design Festival and a panel discussion had me talking alongside Katy Barrett (Curator of Art Collections at the Science Museum, London) and Huai-Ti Lin (Director of Neuromechanics and Bio-Inspired Technologies Laboratory, Imperial College London) about Art and Science working together.
At this time I had became fascinated with mechanical systems which are precarious and specifically how such physical systems seem to breath with their potential for cataclysmic and dramatic transformation. This was timely as in 2020 the Covid pandemic hit. I returned to my found object roots and created the series Systems which are direct explorations of precariousness. The physical here is used to express itself as well as the wider social and the political.
In 2020 I was approached by the artist Ingrid Pollard about a collaboration on the creation of three large kinetic sculptural pieces for her retrospective exhibition Carbon Slowly Turning at MK Gallery, Milton Keynes in 2022. These would become Bow Down and Very Low - 123 and presented me with the opportunity to explore evocative mechanical systems of balance, articulation and collapse on a human scale. Taking an archival UK Government film of the 1950s of a young black girl curtsying as the May Queen in an entirely white English village as the starting point the physicality of these sculptures is analogous to social/cultural/political systems of racial exploitation, subjugation and physical violence.
Ingrid Pollard was shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2022 for Carbon Slowly Turning which has since toured to Turner Contemporary, Margate, and a selection of Art Works from this exhibition, including Bow Down and Very Low - 123, will be shown from October 2022 in the Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Liverpool.
I continued my observational sculptural studies of nature inspired forms and movement, these becoming less figurative and more abstract, gestural explorations of form, colour, moment and response.
From June - July 2022 I had the solo exhibition Suspending Motion in a converted Victorian era engine house at Walthamstow Wetlands. I presented art works spanning eight years, including various butterfly and dragonfly prototypes, Dragonfly Imago, sculptures from the Systems series and more recent abstract responsive works such as Phoenix and Sensory Chain.
In June 2022 my kinetic sculptural study 567 - blue was accepted within the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. I was awarded the Jack Goldhill Award for Sculpture by the Royal Academy for 567 - blue.