Jessica Rost MRSS

I’m a sculptor living off-grid, having completed an MFA at University of Leeds, for which I was awarded a distinction, and won YSP’s Graduate Award 2021. After completing the MFA I set up an off-grid artist community from an old dairy in Cheshire, Ashbank Arts, where I have a studio/workshop base, and I now live in Lancaster.

A skilled metal worker and mixed media artist - welding fabrications, assemblages, sound and textiles – I have created large scale sculpture, immersive installations and alternative living structures. I’m interested in passive protest, ecology, animality, and sustainable systems of production, taking inspiration from durable culture, known as permaculture design, with its basic principles of caring for the planet, the people and sharing fairly with others.

My interest in off-grid living in these unprecedented times, has made me more acutely aware of how dependent we are, and how caught up we are, in systems which perpetuate inequality, unsustainable production and unnecessary consumption. It is both a political action and an act of solidarity with the environment. My work invites us to question how people, (and art practices), can have less impact on the planet and live in better harmony with nature.

By exploring possible new ways of working, which I describe as a Perma-art practice, I'm striving to raise ideas around connectivity, entanglement, transformation, change, and explore mindful moments of grieving, embodiment, and being-in-nature. A process of observing, working site-specifically with natural surroundings, using local material, and becoming self-aware within resonant systems, I continue to find ways of making which minimally impact on the environment, and which allow people to pause, breath and be present in the landscape.