Discipline
Abstract
Conceptual
Installation / Land / Site-specific
Other
Material
Ceramic/Clay
Glass
Mixed media
Other
Wood/Paper
Region
London
Biography
Rosa Nguyen is of French Vietnamese parentage and was born in London.She gained a BA in 3D Design at Middlesex Polytechnic and an MA in ceramics from the Royal College of Art in 1986. She lives and works between London and the South-West of France where she has established a studio and a garden.
Rosa works primarily, making ceramic and glass sculptural objects, vessels, drawings and installations in the form of poetical compositional tableaux. Taking inspiration from the natural world and our holistic relationship with it, her work is characterized by organic and abstracted vessel forms and the incorporation of living and dried botanical matierials. These are assembled and manipulated through casting and preserving in both fired and clay gesso, given new life through dipping in liquid porcelain and sacrificial kiln firings which fuse and transform the combusted vegetal matter into strange otherworldly hybrid forms in rich glassy coloured glazes. With a long-standing interest in Animist and Oriental philosophies and taking inspiration from discrete arts such as gardening, Japanese art of Ikebana flower arranging, astronomy and traditional Chinese medicine – Rosa’s work evokes a contemplative aesthetic and a deep- rooted spiritual connection with nature. Her work often alludes to the invisible body, the transience between life and death while celebrating the entangled interconnectivity between all life forms.
She has exhibited nationally and internationally and her work is represented in public collections in the UK, Europe, China and Japan including GOSH Arts, The Garden museum collection in London, Touchstones Gallery, Shigeraki museum, Aberdeen Museum and gallery, Crafts Council collection and Anthony Shaw collection at COCA. Her work has been supported by the Daiwa Anglo - Japan foundation, Crafts Council, British Council and the Arts Council of England for her collaborative installations with Ikebana artists in Tokyo and London, ‘Living wall’ installation for Collect project Space at Saatchi gallery, London; Installation ‘Tree Folly with a Cercis’ at the Garden Museum, London; commissioned installation ‘Gardening with Morris’ for exhibition 'Arts and Crafts Then and now' at Compton Verney and her solo show ‘Sanctuary’ at Touchstone gallery for the Manchester Asia Triennial. Rosa was awarded 1st prize for the John Ruskin art prize in 2017.
Selected exhibitions:
Solo shows
2024 Celestial Bodies - Blue Shop Gallery, London.
2019 In Praise of Kiku - White Conduit project space, London.
2014 Sanctuary – Touchstones gallery, Manchester Asia Triennial.
2012 Histoires Naturelles - Blås&knådackholm, Sweden.
2010 Still Living - Bristol museum and Art galleries, Bristol.
2008 Petites Terres - Barthete, France.
Group shows
2023 Sensing Spaces of Healthcare - GOSH Arts, London.
2022 Form & Vessel - Eagle Gallery, London
Transports of Delight- Danielle Arnaud gallery, London.
Forest, Wake this ground - Arnolfini gallery, Bristol.
Of Making & Material - Make Hauser & Wirth, USA.
2021 Wilder than Wildness itself - Make Hauser & Wirth, UK.
Flowers of Romance - White Conduit project space, London.
2020 Orlando- Collect art fair, Somerset House, London.
2019 Backyard sculpture - Domobaal gallery, London.
Phytopia Thames side studios, London & Glynn Vivian gallery, Swansea.
2018 Precious clay - Royal Worcester Museum, Worcester.
Living wall, performed and conceived by artist Rosa Nguyen, co-directed with artist film maker Gilly Booth. The film, Living Wall, looks at the relationship between artist Rosa Nguyen's ceramic and glass objects to living forms. It follows Rosa as she engages with her objects in an improvised ritualistic performance - a choreographic narrative between camera, artist and object. Living Wall includes ceramic and glass objects created by Rosa and which are activated through their re-arrangement with recycled and preserved plants. This latest from a series of the artist's wall compositions engages objects in changing narratives and was recently performed in public during Collect, Project space, Saatchi gallery London in May 2011.
In May 2013 ceramic artist Rosa Nguyen took a dead tree from garden designer Dan Pearson's old Peckham garden and re-incarnated it as 'Tree folly' an installation presented during the Chelsea Fringe Festival at the Garden museum in London. The film follows a conversation between Nguyen and Pearson highlighting their individual approach to working with landscape, plants and objects.