Gillian Brent MRSS
Gillian’s sculpture is rooted in Modernist principles of manipulating form, space and material; she utilises these to address contemporary concerns about the affective power objects have over us, and their intrinsic value.

Gillian constructs sculpture in steel, with additional elements in other materials such as wood, stone, concrete and Jesmonite. She creates spatial and dynamic configurations that synthesise her observations, allude to function and suggest new narratives. Her work process is responsive and organic, using fairly simple techniques to construct sculpture from collections of elements. The space within and around her sculptures becomes activated by the physical materials. Working with balance and gravity is an important of her making process; physical, visual and conceptual.

She has been constructing sculpture using steel rod and sheet for many years. She often use materials which already have a history of being shaped or worked, although she manipulates and forms new materials as well. She has recently begun incorporating found and cast forms and objects into her sculpture to create mass and volume and bring a new focus on subjectivity and shared experience. She often uses discarded domestic objects as sculptural forms, that retain their familiarity yet take on alternative roles in their relation to other materials and to the spatial dynamics of the sculpture. She is interested in how the forms can be repurposed rather than the nostalgia the objects generate, although she isn’t able to control how others see them. She casts some of these objects in Jesmonite, transposing them into a new material to alter their physicality and remove them another step from their history.

www.gillianbrent.co.uk
@gillianbrent

Jill Gibson MRSS
Jill Gibson is a multi-disciplinary artist, working across platforms including sculpture, video, installation, and drawing. Her practice is largely research based (often using an architectural technique called fabric forming) and is an on-going exploration of material and form. Her work considers female iconography. It is subtle and offers a nuanced observation of utilitarian, domestic objects,

Jill has worked for several years expanding the techniques and methods employed to incorporate a wide range of materials and construction methods into her practice. Many of the works partake of a commonality of materials and forms, and yet each being unique, have their own identity within a space and therefore each piece demands to be regarded separately. Each piece evokes ‘a sense of the sacred, of ritual and of the erotic’.

Originally from Sheffield, Jill studied her BA (Hons.) degree course at Glasgow School of Art, Scotland and her MFA in Sunderland, England with Distinctions in both. She was invited to become a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors in 2018 and was awarded the Henry Moore Foundation Research Grant to facilitate her visit to CAST. She has previously exhibited work at the London Frieze, the Venice Biennale and has participated in the Future Feminist Archive Project, Sydney, Australia. .

www.jillgibson.co.uk
@jillgibsonartist

Alexandra Harley MRSS
With a materials led practice Harley is focussed on the perception of motion, animation and flux in non-kinetic sculpture. This abstract sculpture is at the junction of stasis and a perception of motion, an uneasy balance conveys a sense of movement through the physical interpretation of a brief and momentary fragment in time. This is a sculpture in a frozen moment, a fixed physicality contrasting with the sense of movement being articulated. Whilst not actually kinetic, Harley’s sculptures are animated with an impression of motion.

Using mostly using wood, ceramic, bronze and paper, each material offers challenges as the compound constructions are formed and each have significant airways through the sculpture playing as important role as the material itself. With an internal energy pulsing through the complex constructions, these sculptures evade a single analysis and are fully three dimensional. Each material functions as both a starting point and a process, a core element and a guiding rhythm, through which Harley seeks to capture and elucidate fleeting moments.

Harley has been awarded prestigious fellowships in Japan and the USA, and won the Brian Mercer Fellowship in 2016, spending 3 months in the Mariani Bronze Foundry in Italy. She has also had public sculptures commissioned in the Caribbean, Europe and the USA. She is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors, The London Group, Free Painters and Sculptors Society and the Brancaster Chronicles discussion forum.

Harley currently works out of her studio in Stratford, London.

www.alexandraharley.co.uk
@harleysculpture

Sheila Vollmer MRSS
Playing with line, form, space, rhythm and colour, Sheila Vollmer makes abstract sculpture and sculpture installations. Constructing in various materials including wood, steel, Perspex, rope and sometimes castings, she works within both a systematic and spontaneous process of responding directly to materials and making; opening and containing space, searching to express the inside/outside pull of energy and emotion to achieve an organic wholeness.  

Sheila’s work ranges in scale from small hand-held sized sculptures to room size installations and large 3m high outdoor works. Regardless of size and format, what interests her is how the work touches the surfaces it rests on and responds to its surrounding space. Colour is also not an afterthought. Vollmer claims that the colour choice is often vivid in her mind as she makes the work. Added and found colour and surface accentuate the inside/outside of the lines, forms and negative spaces, which in turn add to the rhythm viewpoints, mood and energy of the work.

Inspiration comes from various sources within experiences of architecture, natural ecology systems like the patterns of energy or growth, and the body’s relationship to these. Sheila is interested in how our visual and emotional or poetic selves are triggered by such elements as form, size, colour and rhythm within a sculptural form or installation; in search of that ‘otherness’ - a balance of order, chaos, mood and meaning.

Vollmer’s studio practice is at Art in Perpetuity Trust (APT), London where she was a founding member. She is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors and is Sculpture Tutor and Programme Area Manager, Sculpture at Morley College, London.

www.sheilavollmer.com
@sheilavollmer

Beatrice Galletley MRSS
Beatrice Galletley is a ceramic artist living and working in London. In 2013 she began her Foundation Degree at Kingston University and went on to study her BA in Fine Art at Newcastle University (2014-2018). Beatrice has recently completed a two-year MA in Ceramics & Glass at the Royal College of Art. At the RCA she become particularly inspired by objects that are multi-dimensional; they defy boundaries both physically and metaphorically.

Beatrice’s ceramic works engage with her direct and intuitive approach to her practice. Rooted in her deep fascination with objects in a state of flux, these works challenge our existing perception of the world by defying our need to categorise things and thus allowing objects to be seen in a new light. The ambiguity of these works defies boundaries and categorisation. Beatrice achieves this through merging opposing forms; including geometric and organic, playing with scale, manipulation of context, and colour, to create works that are suggestive and act as prompts.

Using process-based abstraction; she is able create playful and intriguing forms using techniques such as slab building and coiling. Whilst creating these forms the artist moves with the work, changing and pushing the material to its limit, giving a performative component to the sculptures.

www.beatricegalletley.com
@galletley_art

Anna Reading
Anna Reading (she/her) is a London based Artist working primarily in sculpture, performance, drawing and text. Her work celebrates forms of growth and survival within inhospitable environments, across human and non-human worlds. Rooted in experiences of vulnerability and exposure, the works emulate natural forms of protection and shelter.

Combining mixtures of surplus materials, she uses modified shell-grotto techniques to clutch, wedge and bind matter into new embraces. Commonly the works hold excess items from industrial processes, such as oyster shells surplus from pearl farming, quarried slate and lumps of asphalt extracted from road surfaces. Layers of protection are built up on the works, akin to exoskeletons and armour, drawing this industrial matter into the skin. Processes of layering and combining materials are left visible for the works to exist in a state of becoming.

Figurative animals and plant-like forms act as translators or messengers from a world beyond our own shelters. Shell-like forms are a recurring subject matter, offering a portal into an interior world, a space of retreat, of both aggression, and defence.

Reading is an Associate Lecturer at Camberwell College of Arts and Central St Martins..

www.annareading.co.uk
@annareading