Polly Jane Wilson
Polly Jane Wilson
Grounding, 2020
ChromaLuxe Print on Aluminium
60 x 92.5 cm
About this Work
Created from hand-dyed sand moulded to form landscape-like contours, Grounding is a reflection on the meaning of the term “ground”, as an environment in which the seen and the unseen, and the familiar and the alien co-exist through constant ecological change. Printed on aluminium, Grounding is materially ambiguous and depicts ground as a surface that is simultaneously micro and macro; a portal to reflect on the unknowable within the familiar surface of the earth.
About Polly Jane Wilson
Polly Jane Wilson is a cross-disciplinary visual artist based in London. She graduated from BA Contemporary Textile Practices at Norwich University of the Arts in 2009, and will graduate from MA Sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, in 2021. Wilson’s work has been selected for shows across the UK, including at Saatchi Gallery, London, Bankside Gallery, London, R.K Burt Gallery & Safe House, London, and The Sainsbury Centre & Kings Lynn Arts Centre, Norfolk.
Drawing from her personal experience of growing up on a commercial farm, Wilson’s work explores themes of belonging, human nourishment and ecological destruction. Seeking out the teetering points between the practical and romantic, she considers human attachment to the landscape, and its use as both an industrialised space for mass production and a seductive environment in which to escape. Materiality and surface are central to Wilson’s image-making. Her works are often realised as ephemeral installations combining unstable materials, painting techniques, sculptural forms and disorientating plays of light and shadow. She re-enchants commonplace substances such as sand, graphite and straw by using them in extreme and unexpected ways. In doing so, she evokes a sense of distorted reality and the supernatural to highlight the limits of human perception in experiencing earthly matter.
Education
The Slade School of Fine Art, MA Sculpture& Contemporary Art Theory,2018 –2021
Norwich University of the Arts, BA Contemporary Textile Practices(First Class Honours), 2006 –2009
York College, Foundation in Art and Design (Distinction), 2005 -2006
Exhibitions
London Grads Now, The Saatchi Gallery, London,September2020 Group Show, Slade School of Fine Art, London, September 2019
Love Symposium, Slade Gallery, London, September 2019
Housewarming, Safe House, London, February 2019
Open Studios Exhibition, Studio 18, London, December 2018
SAVORR presents Dead Good Disco, Stew Gallery, Norwich, July2010
Eastern Open, King’s Lynn Arts Centre, King’s Lynn, April 2010
The Late Shift, The Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, May 2009
RWS Contemporary Watercolour Competition, Bankside Gallery, London, March 2009
Paper, R.K. Burt Gallery, London, March 2008
The Late Shift presents Play, The Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, February 2008