Ones to Watch: Interview with Amelia Frances Wood

YOUR FULL NAME, AND UNIVERSITY COURSE/YEAR

Amelia Frances Wood, Leeds Arts University, Fine Art, 2019.

CAN YOU DESCRIBE YOUR WORK TO USING 3 WORDS?

Tactile, unsugared, multifaceted.

WHAT MEDIUM DO YOU PREFER TO USE?

Clay

WHAT IS THE INSPIRATION BEHIND YOUR WORK?

Using a haptic exploration through different materials, I manipulating matter to create strange and surreal artworks inspired by the body, design, projections of the mind and merging the mundane.

WHAT IS YOUR MOST IMPORTANT ARTIST TOOL? IS THERE SOMETHING YOU CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT IN YOUR STUDIO?

I think my most important tool as an artist is music, I find music paramount to creating, I’m never without it in the studio.

DURING THIS UNCERTAIN TIME WHAT WILL YOU DO TO OCCUPY YOURSELF?

I am currently collaborating with a poet in my household, we are creating a book of her poems and my artist response to the words.

WHICH ARTISTS ARE YOU MOST INFLUENCED BY?

Egon Schiele, L.S Lowry, Louise Bourgeoise. Still living Artists Emma Hart, Francis Uprichard and my gran Jenny Wood.

HOW DO YOU SEEK OUT OPPORTUNITIES?

Talking to likeminded people and curator space.

Sustainability is very important to me and my practice. I work with a lot of earthly materials in their most natural state whilst gathering and reusing many other pieces within my work supporting sustainability and the preservation and care for the planet.

My plan is to create as much as possible in my studio, working towards a body of work for my first solo show.

Seeing Rachel Maclean ‘feed me’ at the British art show 8, I think I watched it about three times.

Films: Egon Schiele: Death and the maiden.

TV: Turning the art world inside out.

Louise Bourgeois, destruction of the father, reconstruction of the father.

@Pollynor @shagey_

A dream project would be a funded residency to Faenda in Italy, responding to the traditional techniques and culture whilst having access to the industrial kilns enabling me to create large clay sculptures. To then have these sculptures showcased in a museum to contrast with the existing artefacts I believe would juxtapose perfectly with the contemporary use of clay.

My most successful sculpture is The Well-Behaved Teacup and Saucer. The work is made in response to the limitations of ornamental and decorative labels automatically applied to ceramic work. I believe it is successful in taking the distinct orange from the bisque terracotta and subverting the assumed domestic functions of ceramics, by creating a sculpture unable to fit on a plinth or be picked up, let alone filled with tea.

Find out more about Amelia’s work here.

Read about all the Ones to Watch artists here.

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