Sophie Goodchild
About
Sophie Goodchild (b.1993, Chester) is an artist based in London.
She is a recent graduate of the Alternative Art School, School of the Damned (2019), and is due to study a term abroad, post RCA, at Kyoto City University of the Arts in the School of Craft in Contemporary Dyeing and Weaving.
She has been awarded Artist in Residence at Troy Town Art Pottery, August 2021 where she will be producing a new body of ceramic work for her first Solo Show at Flatland Projects in Bexhill, September 2021. She is recipient of London Bronze Casting Editions 2021 and was a finalist in last years Ingram Prize, 2020.
Upcoming shows include:
2021 Underpinned by the movements of FREIGHTERS, The Florence Trust, curated by Joe Moss, London, UK
2021 Locus Amoenus, Curated by Sophie Goodchild and Sam Hanner, The Function Suite, London, UK
2021 Solo Show (title tbc), Flatland Projects, Bexhill, UK
Past shows include:
2021 Final, Not Over- Again, Unit 1 Gallery, London, UK
2021 20 seconds or more, Young Space Winter 2021, Co curated by Sim Smith and Kate Mothes, Young Space, Online
2020 Pending, San Mei Gallery, Brixton, London
2020 The Ingram Prize, London, UK, Online
2020 Model Village, curated by Hot Desque, Swiss Church, Covent Garden, London, UK
2019 All Was Vibrating Fur, School of The Damned End of Year Show Part 2, Limbo Limbo, London
2019 All Vibrating Fur, School of The Damned End of Year Show Part 1, Civic House, Glasgow
2019 Sinc, School of the Damned interim show (touring), The Tetley, Leeds, UK
2019 Sinc, School of the Damned interim show, Backlit Gallery, Nottingham, UK
Statement
Sophie’s practice infuses the fragility of existence within the non-place, non-linear space between human and non-human. An enquiry into the otherworldly through the leading foot of the intuitive strange, linking the rural, the environmental, the mythological, the political, the folkloric and the historical. Combining traditionally hand-crafted techniques such as felting, ceramics and weaving, she explores and responds to a new ecological vision in opposition to the capital. A space to imagine an alternative history and an ineffable future.
The physicality of the body in the making of structures take centre stage: craft, repetition, trust, territory and rhythm. There is a pollination of information that infects and spans from work to work, in the fusing and preserving act of making.
Her making is embedded in the roots of materiality; saturation and sensation as translation. Embellishing layers as screens as cracks, through texture and density, the making is tidal in structure, embodying natural peaks and valleys in both the stitch and pixels combined. An entangled order.
Material as universal. Making as ambition. Making as challenge- always.
The other aspect of craft work is concerned with artwork, the realization of a hope for a lawful and enduring nature. Other elements, such as proportion, space relations, rhythm, predominate in these experiments, as they do in the other arts. No limitations other than the velo of the material itself are set. More than an active process, it is a listening for the dictation of the material and a taking in of the laws of harmony. It is for this reason that we can find certitude in the belief that we are taking part in an eternal order – Black Mountain College Bulletin 5. 1938. Reprinted in College Art Journal III:2. Janurary 1944, pg. 51-54 and in Anni Albers: On Designing. 1959 and 1971.
Tonsils shrinking to seeds and lungs to cores
As Long As The Sun Lasts- studio install
Reheating the Soufflé
In Collaboration with:
- Hot Desque
Founded in 2018, Hot Desque is a curatorial partnership by artists Lizzy Drury and Neena Percy, showing emerging and established artists within site-specific exhibitions, writing publications and hosting events. Hot Desque have worked on projects in temporary settings across the UK, including a former nightclub. The exhibitions aim to bring artworks together as part of a theatrical mise-en-scène, providing a platform for experimentation and interdependence.