Art on a Postcard International Women’s Day Auction - Curated by Beth Greenacre

About 

Much of my work starts with images printed in books. Widely circulated images (for example of London monuments) shape our shared perception of places and identities, by which individuals navigate. I often use my work to think about how subjectivity is mapped onto both place and time, photography being a direct way to think about time: you can’t avoid time with a photograph. I often work sculpturally with glass, using it like a lens to focus the act of looking. This is also an extension of photographic looking which is necessarily through a glass lens. 

Whether I am working on a sculpture, a film, or an event it aligns with a collage sensibility. All my work is in essence collage; the practice of bringing found materials into a fresh context. As I work, I try to expose and spatialise the ideological and the formal structure of an image or a place.  

“The pages and images she excavates, now dislocated from their original context, become more like artifacts or archaeological remnants – more enigmatic, more mutable, and open to more complex meaning and association.” (Martin Clark 2013) 

Education 

English Literature at St Catherine's College Oxford University, BA Fine Art - Chelsea College of Art, and an MA in Fine Art - Goldsmiths College, University of London. 

Select Exhibitions/Awards 

Recent Group Exhibitions:  

2021 British Art Show 9 Aberdeen, Wolverhampton, Manchester., Plymouth 

2019    Desde el Salon Whitechapel Gallery London 

2019    Nocturnal Creatures Whitechapel Gallery London 

2019    Dream Libraries Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen, Germany 

2018    Speech Acts: reflection, imagination, repetition Manchester Art Gallery 

Recent Solo Exhibitions:  

2022    Flux, Kestle Barton, Cornwall 

2020    Taken in a few seconds // By the reflection of light, The Harris Museum Preston 

2018    The Universal Now and Further Episodes, PEER UK London 

2017    we beat the bounds, Tate St Ives 

In 2020 Abigail was awarded a Paul Hamlyn Foundation award for visual art, and her work was purchased by the Arts Council Collection. She also completed a Contemporary Art Society commission for a major private collection. 
In March 2016 she was awarded the BMW Art Journey prize at Art Basel, to travel to lost libraries along the Silk Road. Her book 'Lost Libraries' documenting this journey was published by Hatje Cantz in 2018. 

Gallery Representation 

Michael Hoppen Gallery 

Statement about AOAP Submitted Artworks 

In the process of making collage, interesting images are inevitably set aside, sometimes these are photographs on the reverse of pages I am using.  

This invitation to make a postcard for International Women’s Day auction to raise money for the Hepatitis C Trust was an opportunity to go through my piles of offcuts.  

Here I have selected two, and overlaid them with left over gold and palladium leaf, still bearing the shapes that I originally used them for. I sometimes make works like this, which are the shadow side of the framed collage works I make, and can be be both playful and redemptive. 

You must not reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell or exploit any works. In doing so, you endanger our relationships with artists, and directly jeopardise the charitable work we do. Anyone found doing so will be subject to legal action.