Amy Mordan

Amy Mordan (b.1977) has lived and worked in London for the last two decades. She completed her foundation at Winchester School or Art (1997), her BA at Middlesex University (2000) and now her MA at the Royal College of Art (2021).

For the next 11 years, developing her interest in horticulture, Amy worked at the Chelsea Physic Garden, Capel Manor, Regents Park and under-glass at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew.

Leaving Kew in 2011, Amy coordinated a seven-year project in Wiltshire, landscaping a 17th century quarry and restoring and converting its Georgian cottages. In addition, Amy organised funding for arts projects in South London, where she lives. Obtaining a studio in 2013, Amy returned to the practice of making art.

Exhibitions to date include the Woolwich Print Fair (2016), Slaughterhaus Print Studio (2013-18), and bi-annually at the Pullen’s Yard Open Studios.

This body of work celebrates and observes nature. It is a practice of recognition and meeting, that is both outside-of-and-within self; the living energy of creation, its vibrant emptiness and the co-dependencies therein.

During lock-down I started working with sustainable and ecological materials, and the process of finding them became part of the practice; walking before dawn seeking the city’s pockets of nature, often returning multiple times before committing the ideas to the studio.

Many of the materials employed are organic: earth pigment, wood, crystals, river water, bone, petals, carbon, gold. Additionally, the restrained but necessary use of the inorganic holds and sustains the pieces: magnets, glue, varnish, discarded items.

A life-long interest in comparative religions and ritualism informs how and why I work with the materials. In some pieces there is narrative, and the materials are embedded with personal meaning; their creation becomes ritualised, illustrating the process and passage of time and events of life. Other works, like Antlers and Wood with Eyes, are encountered in their raw state with elevated narrative to celebrate the interconnection of nature.

I do not consider myself to belong to a religious denomination but my life and thinking, like many artists before me, is influenced by Buddhist and Daoist philosophies in addition to my Christian heritage. The work connects nature and spiritualism, harnessing transcendental moments and the attention of where ‘I’ and ‘it’ are placed.