Amba Sayal-Bennett

Amba Sayal-Bennett (b.1991) lives and works in London. She received her BFA from Oxford University and her MA in The History of Art from The Courtauld Institute. She was awarded her PhD in Art Practice and Learning from Goldsmiths and has published her practice-based research with Tate Papers. Amba is a co-founder of Cypher Billboard, an artist-run public program of site-specific billboard artworks and off-site projects based in London. She is currently an Associate Lecturer in Visual Culture at UWE Bristol.

Select solo exhibitions include: A Mechanised Thought, indigo+madder, London (2020); Every Line Makes a Cut, Carbon12, Dubai (2019); Diffraction Metis, Yve Yang Gallery, Boston (2016); and Deft Nodes, Lundgren Gallery, Palma de Mallorca (2016). Select group exhibitions include: 5th Edition, Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer, Slough (2021); Drawing Biennial, Drawing Room, London (2021); ABSINTHE §2, Collective Ending, London (2019); Espacio, Luz y Orden, José de la Fuente, Santander (2019); A World In Vertigo, Brunel Museum, London (2019); As You Become, Exhibit 320, Delhi (2018); ROYGBIV, Kate Werble Gallery, New York (2018); and Old Rope, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London (2014).

Awards: Gilbert Bayes Award, Royal Society of Sculptors (2020); London Bronze New Editions, London Bronze Casting (2020); Graduate Studio Award, A.P.T (2014 – 2016); WW SOLO Award, WW Gallery (2014); The Ives Prize, Oxford University (2012); and The Vivien Leigh Prize, The Ashmolean Museum (2012).

Published Research: Amba Sayal-Bennett, 'Diffractive Analysis: Embodied Encounters in Contemporary Artistic Video Practice', Tate Papers, no.29, Spring 2018.

Residencies: Arnis Residency, Arnis (2020); Cypher Carving Residency, Dorset (2019); and CERN Quantum Futures, CERN (2019).

Collections: Saatchi Collection; Western Art Print Room Collection, Ashmolean Museum; and Art Jameel.

Email: amba.sb@me.com

Website: www.ambasb.com

Instagram: @ambasayalbennett

Manifesting as three interconnected lines of enquiry: two-dimensional drawing, projection and sculptural installation, my practice explores performative dynamics within human and non-human assemblages. My recent work focuses on instruments of measurement, from astrolabes, compass, to Jantar Mantars. These curious, ancient, other-worldly calculating machines enabled the observation of astronomical positions with the naked eye through an assemblage of measuring device, celestial and human bodies. An instrument is a human and non-human assemblage, a system created by the body working in conjunction with a material structure or object. Within my studio practice, whether I am using a plastic drawing stencil in my works on paper, or three-dimensional computer modelling software such as Rhino, I am interested in how instruments, apparatus and materials have agency.

Solo exhibition at indigo+madder London

16 October - 17 December 2020

'Amba’s new body of work includes sculptures and drawings that explore the performativity of technology and relations to otherness. Abstraction allows for instability and multiplicity, a possible means of communing with difference without it being instrumentalised. In addition to working with processes of abstraction, Amba explores our use of language, scientific methods, and her own encounters with materials in the studio, as staging relations to otherness in the form of the non-human.’

See link below for the full press release and information about individual works.

Powder coated mild steel, chemiwood, MDF, resin, velvet, magnets

133 x 43 x 64cm

2020

3d printing Body Cyborg Digital Form hybridity Machinery Metal Nonhuman planes Sculpture Technology

Solo exhibition at Carbon12 Gallery Dubai

18 November 2019 - 10 January 2020

‘As the Newtonian nature of space, time and matter, with its assumptions of separability and metaphysical individualism, is undone by quantum physics, we need to develop analytical frameworks capable of understanding these notions in their materiality. In other words, how these things come into existence, rather than starting the analysis after they have arrived on the scene. Every Line Makes a Cut presents a new body of sculptural work by Amba Sayal-Bennett that investigates such methodological questions. Translating drawn forms across different media and scale, she explores how her works, herself, the materials and material processes that she uses are produced in new ways through their relation, or to borrow feminist theorist Karen Barad’s term, their ‘intra-action’.’

See link below for the full press release and information about individual works.

Apparatus Cut Diagram Drawing Form Line Metal Methodology Sculpture Technology Translation World Building

Bronze

40 x 40 x 9cm

2021

Edition of 8

For enquiries about this work, please email info@londonbronzeeditions.com

Zil stems from my research into instruments, the body working in conjunction with a material device or object. Rather than using a digital drawing as a set of instructions to give form to otherwise passive matter, I used translation, from render to cast, as a method to explore how through resistances, incompatibilities and unanticipated effects, bronze became an active participant in the making of the work. Just as material insights from experimenting with steel have folded back into my practice, working with bronze has similarly directed its development. Resembling a string-percussion instrument hybrid, Zil explores performance in a broader sense: where matter is not instrumental but has a vital and dynamic role in the cultivation of both new work and working methods.