todays events / education

view list

news / reviews

view list

guides

view list

artists / curators / writers

Tobi Deeson

Country of residence United Kingdom

I use unconventional yet feminine materials such as textiles and decorative fabrics to explore, from a child’s and adults vantage point, the lasting and influential impressions people leave on one another.Tobi is an artist living and working in London. Alongside her practice she teaches at The Brit School for Visual and Performing Arts and is on the Board of Directors for Transition Gallery.Solo Exhibitions:2006, 'May to September', 1000000mph.2002, 'Not Hiding Anymore', Rochester.Beauty within my work is of great importance and there is a constant juxtaposition of aesthetically pleasing objects with unsettling, if still preciously made subjects.
Cabinets are used to contain and restrain and fabrics are used to remind of an era now gone. My practice often takes the form of a series of objects; these are then interchangeable when being presented. This allows for a fluid narrative which can respond to a variety of spaces and constant refreshing of ideas, as there is no end to a piece.
Shown above is Tobi’s first London solo show where she created a site specific installation made of flowers intricately cut from 70’s bed sheets, to hang from floor to ceiling over a large plate glass mirror.(May to September,100,000mph Gallery)
The effect is a forest of flowers, full of the promise of nature and a new spring. However on close inspection, the flowers are fake, mass-produced from cheep bed sheets and the mirror, a cold hard material only able to reflect, not grow and give life as spring promises. Small white plaster animals appear, feotus like, perhaps mutated even. These too evoke new life and beginnings but their cold small bodies, not quite of life, lie on stony ground.
Tobi’s work clearly references family history and personal relationships but avoids sentimentality and narcissism and instead evokes a cultural memory in a bed sheet, and a reminder that it is the shared personal and practical details of everyday life lived, in which social life, change and personal endurance are found.

Group Exhibitions
2005, SPACE Open, selected by Sacha Craddock and Bea de Souza, London.
2005, Royal British society of Sculptors, bursary show, London.
2004, Contemporary Textile Exhibition, OBG Gallery, Belfast.
2004, 'Attack on Precinct Deborah', London
2004, 'Goth Moth', Transition Gallery, London.
2003, Hampstead school, site spacific installation, London
2003, 'Liar,liar', Ravenscroft Space, London.
2002, The Florence Trust, London.
2002, Art on Paper, Royal College, London.
2001, Art on Paper, Royal College, London.
2001, 'Visionary', Pennybank Showcase, London.
2001, Liberty's, London.

Exhibitions '00 Nature Part 1, 10.Apr - 15.May.08, Contemporary Art Projects, Arboreal, 05.May - 03.Jun.07, Transition Gallery, Houses in Motion, 17.Nov - 10.Dec.06, Fieldgate Gallery

 

exhibitions ending this week

view list

add to favourites

send to a friend
coming soon

print this page