Emma Woffenden MRSS

My work centres around the body in it’s complete and fragmented state, as both a physical and psychological site. I experience that emotion and sensation is stored in the body and can be expressed as form, that by making art we can materialise and decode what’s around us. Understanding how the human can utilise sculpture in ritualised action interests me. I think I make futuristic looking bodies with primal actions. I talk about hierarchal power and powerlessness, human dislocation and reconciliation. I also use religious cultural references to explore our attitudes towards power and gender.

I trained as a glassmaker and have an MA from the Royal College of Art. My work evolved using these transferable skills and taking a language of glass form into other materials. Now my practice combines many different materials and media it can be objects, sculpture or installation.

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Woffenden lives and works in London. She has exhibited and lectured internationally and has glass or mixed media work represented in 25 public collections in the UK, USA, Europe and China, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Welcome Trust London, The Ingram Collection, National Museums of Scotland, MOMA New York, Corning Museum of Glass and Shanghai Museum of Glass. Her work has been supported by the Arts Foundation award for glass, the Jerwood makers award, the Crafts Council, the Arts Council of England for a site responsive evolving exhibition ‘No Horizon’ across three venues, Fabrica, Angel row, Firstsite, and a sculpture/ performance/film collaboration ‘Fell’, and by Creative Scotland for a research project with a film maker and performance artist ‘Live In Your Hands’.