About Ruby Plank
Ruby Plank graduated from Leeds Arts University in 2020, and makes objects which are fuzzy and vibrant, light and forgiving. Beyond sustainable Welsh mountain sheep wool and organic pigment, they are vague and wobble and sometimes gently hum. Through the slowness of process and a single-barbed needle, a form pertaining to something vast and country-like will emerge. Bent or coiled metals, when activated by a hand or a draft, accelerates movements in the internal supporting structures that anchor the fibre objects. This delicate and opportunistic receptivity can change them from a state of passivity, of just “being here”, to embody something alive and present, or startled and enthused.
Entangled low-grade wool strands are industriously achieved through a cycle of sensuous labour. The felts’ relation to its material origin does not diminish. It shapeshifts through a ritualised process performed with the same pace and patience as some of the permanent cycles of chaotic re-beginnings you could encounter on the sides of a mountain. The sculptures were slow but felt like they had grown with the agency of a shrub or a seed. Having spent seven years life drawing and drawing from life, drawings, to the artist, are seen as natural by-products of observed truths. A fierce one is a humble one in that it hosts the same feeling hosted by the objects it speaks with, and consequently crystallises.
See more