Spotlight Holly Stevenson
Holly Stevenson and Sid Motion
We asked Holly Stevenson some spotlight questions ahead of the launch of her JW Anderson install “Shoppers, Shoes & Sacks” curated by Sid Motion.
Holly’s work explores themes of body, gender, consumerism, the handmade and tangible desire - themes which as Sid says has “substantial crossover with the concerns of fashion and its display.” The sexual relevance of Stevenson’s work also makes it well placed to be shown in the heart of Soho. As Holly notes “Soho is perfect for my work given that it is often remarked that my work looks like sex toys!”
What elements of the JW Anderson collection inspired you when making this series?
I am interested in garments from both a sculptural and psychological point of view, the element I find most inspiring in JW Anderson’s work is pleasure, the clothes articulate joy.
What interests you about this link between fashion and art?
I have always been interested in fashion’s ability to manifest desire, as well as its use of materials to think about the body.
How has creating these works differed from your other projects, Sigmund Freud's Ashtray for example?
I like to work on site-specific projects and I interpreted the JW Anderson window as such. My Sigmund Freud’s Ashtray project is ongoing, it is a conceptual site from which to discuss psychoanalysis. So, there are cross overs here in both the thinking and the outcomes.
Holly Stevenson makes fluid ceramic forms that explore Sigmund Freud’s favourite ashtray and last cigar as an analytical metaphor. Her vessels diligently embody the ashtray and cigar as though they were two gendered male and female forms, the yonic ovular dish and the cylindrical phallic cigar, as she reconfigures them into a material language of her own. Holly graduated from Chelsea College of Art and Design Fine Art MA in 2011 with the generous help of the Stanley Picker Foundation and was awarded the MFI Flat Time House Graduate Award, supported by the John Latham Foundation. Recently she was selected for the Mother Art Prize 2020, had her first solo show at Sid Motion Gallery and been awarded her first public art commission by The CoLAB Temple for The Artist’s Garden.
More information about Holly’s work can be found on the website.
https://www.holly-stevenson.co.uk
https://sidmotiongallery.co.uk/artist/holly-stevenson/