Emma Gibson (b1980, UK) is a British artist exploring the uncertain state of reality. Having studied at Open School East and University of the Arts London, she currently lives and works in the Highlands of Scotland .
My large scale installations are the result of both traditional and technological making processes, often using 3D-scanning and digital representations to create physical sculptures using sustainable handmade techniques, inside total environments. I regularly collaborate with scientists and researchers in my fields of interest. Currently I'm interested in the idea of an ecological "uncanny valley" - where what we consider to be the natural world is not exactly as it seems any more, coaxing out an eerie feeling of discomfort, environmentally/ technologically/ psychologically. Recent projects have focused on coastlines and shores as a metaphor for the edge of reality, future mythsand a loss of control.
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"Installation artist, Emma Gibson, deals with intimate psychological themes using explicitly materialistic techniques, giving rise to a physical and mental space that quietly pulls apart everyday notions of self and society. Gibson’s incredibly rich installation work is built from layer upon layer of common social or personal signifiers, periodically interrupted by the sideways-sentimental, the horrific or the otherwise wholly peculiar. These elements eerily function together to lure the viewer into an initial sense of familiarity that gets quickly turned in on itself, throwing up questions of sanity, identity, morality and the self."
Nadine Monem - director/publisher, Common Editions.
"Emma Gibson creates installations that disrupt our sense of continuity and identity. Gibson's world contains the ordinary detritus of life; it is familiar and comforting. But simmering just beneath the surface, there is a subtle, immaculately executed trigger for a realisation, an insight or even a joke that forces us to reconsider the magnitude of something that we think banal. And she does it with such stillness and quietness that it creeps up on us as an aesthetic seduction rather than as a mere conceptual scare. It's like entering a crime scene and sifting through the evidence until the tiniest details emerge, slowly building up a picture of a dark event and its perpetrator, who you end up falling in love with because the subtle clues they left behind betray traces of an indelible intelligence. "
Dr. Daniel Barnes - philosopher/critic.
follow me here @gibson.emma
Recent:
Scarborough Museum and Art Gallery2022 Quicksand solo exhibition, triptych of sculptures and installation
Turner Contemporary Open 2021-22 Quicksand tryptic of SEM prints, micro grains
Selfridges Art Block 2020 - Quicksand commission, triptych of sculptures curated by The Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Well Projects - A cut from sharp grasss 2019 - Point Break dual sited commission
Margate Festival 2019/ TURNER PRIZE -Point Break installation commission, main program
Selfridges Artist in Residence 2018
Bloomberg New Contemporaries shortlisted artist 2018
Margate Arts Festival 2018 installation commission 2018 : Augmented reality app /3D scanned sculptures 'Last to Go'
Mural by the Sea commissioned artist, Dreamland 2018: billboard image shot at Deadman's Corner 'Save Yourselves'
At The Violet Hour group show, Nayland Rock Hotel 2018
Turner Contemporary Open School East takeover 'The Handling Collection' performance with fake artifact 2017
Open School East Associate Artist 2017
Shadows, joint exhibition with Conrad Armstrong, Resort 2016
Shelling Out, solo project, Crate 2015
Awards/ grants:
Creative Scotland grant for individuals 2023
A-N Artists Bursary Award 2022
Arts Council National Lottery Project Grant 2019
KCC arts investment award 2019
Arts Council National Lottery Project Grant - R&D 2018
A-N Artists Bursary Award 2019
