Kerry Jameson

About

For Kerry Jameson, work often starts with an idea or an emotion, and this attracts similar material like a magnet. She collects things that speak to her, objects that draw her attention, almost as though there is a strange connection linking the observer with the observed.

For this body of work, the artist travelled to Europe to explore collections that were amassed throughout the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Baroque periods. The Treasury art within Dresden’s Green Vault and the Habsburg collection in Vienna were a visual explosion of inspiration - exotic objects such as nautilus shells and emu eggs interlaced with gold and precious gems resulting in objects that projected a rare and spiritual quality. Other thoughts turned to relics and reliquaries found in the churches of Antwerp and Brussels demonstrating the symbolic union of materials encasing cloth and bones, reminding us of the line that separates the dead from the living. More research involved early anatomy drawings that open up a macabre world of the inside through animated cadavers and early medical descriptions.

Jameson’s practice in the studio is about salvaging and reworking defective and broken ceramic pieces to fit with newly made work. She often starts with a collection of fragments, body parts, and rejected ceramic sculptures as well as found objects that are then manipulated and animated into a material collage. She uses hessian and fabric to push things forward, joining the elements and acting as a surface that can carry paint and other materials. While in the making, much of the artist’s attention is focused on how things hang together in order to make each piece feel convincing and complete. 

Kerry Jameson trained at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design and the Royal College of Art. Her ceramic and mixed media sculptures have an emotional charge that is presented through a mix of narrative set pieces, tableaux and individual figures. In 2013 Jameson was shortlisted for the prestigious FIRST@108 Public Art Award at the Royal British Society of Sculptors and the Arts Foundation Ceramics Fellowship in 2011. Her work is featured in many private collections and the public collection of the York Museum and Art Gallery. 

For more information, images or to rarrange an interview with the artist(s) please contact Tatjana Marsden or Siobhan Feeney info@marsdenwoo.com
+44(0)20 7336 6396