About
Jill's practice is multi-disciplinary, working across platforms including sculpture, video, installation, painting and drawing and is an on-going exploration of material and form and one which critically examines historical female narratives and female iconography, fragility, and transience. The work offers nuanced observations of our immediate environment. These concerns are social, political, and ecological. Jill has worked for several years expanding the techniques and methods employed to incorporate a wide range of materials and construction methods into her practice. More recently she has been incorporating naturally occurring material, wax, dye, minerals, shell, coal, sand, clay and paper into the work, moving towards a more sustainable way of production.
Originally from Sheffield, an industrial town in the North of England, Jill studied her BA (Hons.) degree course at Glasgow School of Art, Scotland and an MFA in Sunderland, England with Distinctions in both. She was invited to become a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors in 2018 and was awarded the Henry Moore Foundation Research Grant to facilitate her visit to CAST and has previously exhibited work at the London Frieze, the Venice Biennale and has participated in the Future Feminist Archive Project, Sydney, Australia. More recently (Summer 2023), she was invited to participate in VignArt, an outdoor sculptural exhibition in the Champagne region of France. The expansive work - a collaborative piece- was sited in Epernay in the grounds of Domain Gosset and was inspired by Babette Clicquot, who revolutionised the champagne industry in France with her invention of Le Reumage.
Other notable projects include the following: A research project, conducted at the University of Manitoba – UoM, in the Department of Architecture in November 2022 ,facilitated by a research grant from the Henry Moore Foundation (UK), C.A.S.T and the Sustainability in Action Faculty, SiAF, UoM. In 2018 Jill was invited to create and install several commissioned works shown at Cheeseburn Sculpture Park, Stamfordham, Northumberland. She was invited again in 2019 and has participated in several larger exhibitions including the Contextile Biennale - 2022, Guimaraes, Portugal, Cotswolds Sculpture Park, Cotswolds, UK - 2019, Sculpture in The Vineyard - Wollombi Village, Lower Hunter Valley NSW, Australia in 2016 and 'Taking Up Space' - Future Feminist Archive - New South Wales, Australia in 2015.
Since leaving the University of Sunderland in 2013 I have endeavoured to sustain my creative practice. I have found that as I have begun to explore new areas of concern, I have become increasingly aware of an emerging circularity to these. I have found that the concerns that I sought to explore during my degree studies in Glasgow were, in a very real sense, intact. They were still there, underpinning so many areas of interest from a feminist perspective, furthering and informing my thinking. I found that the avenues that I had pursued within the world of work were feeding directly into my artistic concerns and ultimately into shaping the resultant explorations and expression. Shared memories of a bleak, industrial 1970's landscape in Sheffield still resonated alongside my studies at Glasgow Art School, and further merged with my three years of working with women in Bangladesh. Marriage and raising children were hugely important in so much as, although fulfilling, they limited my opportunities as a practicing artist. It was not until I had the opportunity to return to study in 2013 that I found myself looking towards new areas of concern and new methodologies, however reappraising my working experience and incorporating these into my practice. This has been significantly informative in determining so many areas of exploration and consideration, with the gradual realisation that my work as an artist has now become increasingly political.
Biography
2024
July 2024 - Reality Check, Royal Society of Sculptors Summer Show, curated by David McAlmont ,Dora House, Kensington, London U.K.
2023
October 2023 - Residency - Vanha Paukku cultural centre, Lapua, Finland.
July 2023 - Fibre and Stone, Le Museum de Pierre, Villhonour, Charante, France
May 2023 - Le Reumage, Installation at Domain Champagne Gosset, Epernay, France. Organised by Vign Art, France 2023
March 2023 - Still Here. APT Gallery, Deptford, London UK
January 2023 - Marin TV, San Fransisco. Undulations Video works selected by Ephemereye.
Video.
2022
Nov 2022 - Henry Moore Foundation Research Grant Award, undertaken at University of Manitoba, Architecture dept, CAST, John Russell Building, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Sept 2022 - Contextile Biennale - 2022, Guimaraes, Portugal
2021