Nicola Anthony - London based Artist

Nicola Anthony works with diverse materials and forms to explore her interests within contemporary art and theory ...glass, snow, sugar cubes, concrete, found objects, soap, polystyrene, chocolate, labels and light projection... With an eye for detail, Nicola Anthony sees the potential in the small things, which are collected and sculpted into something complex, intricate and fascinating.

"For me the measure of an artwork is the amount of time it engages you for, and I aim to make work which is compelling to look at and able to engage its audience on many levels.

Does my work change the atmosphere in a room? I like to think so."

The work is tactile, intricate & multilayered, reflecting her fascination with traces, memory and the process of deconstructing and reconstructing the layers, perceptions and identities which are built up over time. Using diverse and unconventional materials and processes; collections of objects, images, sounds & patterns, she constructs complex and limitless pieces.

Nicola Anthony's most recent work concerns a collection of biological images and an assemblage of identities, featuring in public and private collections in the UK and Europe. Materials such as glass, acrylics and resins allow light to infiltrate the work and introduce the interplay of shadows and refraction.

"I take the components of a piece - be it a sugar cube, a word, a shard of glass, a drawing fragment, an eyelash or a snowflake, and put them together in a way which I hope will create new interaction between the components. I try to evoke ideas stemming from the viewers preconceived notions of these 'components' and how these are challenged or changed when put together in an unusual way." This is also mirrored in the textual elements of the artwork: Statements are collected through a gradual, ongoing project spanning several years to gather diverse responses from a large number of people, but when placed side by side and montaged in the artworks, these statements - words and secrets - take on a new meaning and suddenly relate to eachother in the readers mind - or maybe just relate to the readers mind? (see some of the responses here)

The artists interest in detail draws her to natural and organic structures, and inspiration is often taken from micro scale imagery such as biological and cellular structures. "A lot of my work is drawn from my fascination with the genetic code, its magnificence and ability to determine and encode so much, and yet the delicacy of being so simple and invisible to the eye."

The 'I Find Myself...' Series
In this recent work, delicately sculpted using text, drawing & pattern, 'genetic identity' contrasts with words gathered from others about the fleeting moments, traits and secrets which form their true, everyday identities.

The viewer can appreciate the overall work with its forms, shapes and colours; or look deeper into the fragility and complexity of each little cell, engaging vision as a close sense; a sense of touch. Such complexity goes into every single cell and on several different layers within each one that every piece in this series has been completely unique and individual from its predecessor.

The intricate nature of the artwork has a spatial impact on people by encouraging them to view it and move around it in a distinct way. The audience becomes aware of the text only when close to the surfaces; like the artwork is revealing to them a secret. Text is explored as something organic, fluctuating and delicate, but also as almost unavoidable and intrusive, especially when presented on surfaces of things we would normally interact with - such as in earlier works with lollypops: Suck me, 2006-2007.

Sugar Cube Room, 2006, covered the walls of a room with mosaic swathes of sugar cubes, incorporating textual elements and sound: Taking a simple tactile material and pushing it to its limits to create something which also possesses complexity and depth, and parodies the sensory exclusion of the 'white cube' space. Sugar Cube Room was sponsored by Tate Britain and Tate & Lyle, who both donated generously to provide the 50,000 sugar cubes and sugar cube faces of which the piece comprised.

Proximity is very important: We can never perceive the whole work at once because to see the detail, we get too close to see the whole. We become aware of detail such as text only when close to the surfaces, and in pieces such as Sugar Cube Room, the whispered sound subtly emerges as well.

This artwork, exploring materials, senses and associations brought in by the audience, draws away from specific forms or objects and sticks to organic shapes and multiples; forms we can interact with anthropometrically.

Nicola Anthony attempts to create a textured, intertextual work which references much more than the superficial: Artwork which creates space not only for the body and senses, but also for mind and memory.