Humanity Harmonized
Sally de Courcy’s labyrinthine sculptures employ some special infinite geometry that doesn’t just unite kinetic forces, but human experiences and human conditions. With the layers of understanding the Woking, Surrey -based artist has of states of suffering, emergency, and peril, it’s no wonder such subjects are treated with astoundingly graceful control in the artist’s work. De Courcy primarily works with cast objects and repetitive design, and the process itself is proof of how the artist’s work is a challenge to the senses. Among so many other things, de Courcy’s work pushes us to see beyond the physical plane and to look deeper into invisible tensions and forces of connection before us. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sally de Courcy’s work challenges our perception of human life by revealing our vulnerabilities and questioning our power. Finally, the artist infuses empathy and understanding into every organic sculptural form, allowing every work to consistently rebuild and come alive again.
Part One: Who is Sally de Courcy?
Question #1: Who are you?
I was born in Canterbury, Kent in the UK. An interest in social justice led me away from art into a career in medicine. Early in my training, whilst young and working in the developing world, I was exposed to the suffering of refugees from a genocidal regime These images stayed with me when life and family took me back to the UK and the safety of general practice in Surrey. My own future seemed comfortable until sudden and serious illness catapulted me into retirement at the age of 40. No longer able to do the job I loved and facing an uncertain future, I turned back to art and to art school. The academic training I received over eight challenging years at the University of the Creative Arts, extended and consolidated my practice as a conceptual artist. It allowed me to rebuild myself, piece by piece.
Question #2: Who are you as an artist?
I am inspired by my experiences as both observer and participant, as practitioner and patient, most recently as an immunocompromised artist living a shielded existence in relative social isolation. My interest in making is highly personal, building repetitively from the small to the large, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I began by repeatedly casting simple objects and arranging them to create more complex forms, pursuing the well-trodden path of abstract repetition, and the magnifying repetition of imperfection, as a means of representing physical, social, and cultural evolution. An epiphany came at art school, when I was challenged to make the abstract more personal, to bring more of myself into the piece. My work is not autobiographical in the figurative sense, but like many artists explores the liminal space between conscious representation and unconscious influence. In my case this has meant revisiting my experiences as a witness of human suffering, which is reflected in my work and often stands for those who are treated as less than human.
Question #3: In terms of your artistic journey, why are you here and where are you going?
My artistic journey is about communication, expressing my concerns both social and political. My practice uses contextually linked objects that when reassembled forms a narrative. How that narrative is perceived is very much dependent on the viewers interpretation. Sometimes the interpretation can be different to my own enriching it further but also helping to inform and develop myself and my practice. I am currently working on an installation to be exhibited in London, about the fourfold escalation of refugees crossing the English channel in small boats since the pandemic resulted in closure of land and air routes to the UK.
Question #4: What do you absolutely need your audience to know about you or your work?
The contextually linked objects in my work reveal a hidden narrative. I would like the narrative within my art to be a platform to raise awareness of subjects that are often overlooked or ignored within society and to be a focus for discussion. My work is frequently deliberately decorative but hiding darker and often sinister subjects that when revealed create dissonance. The sum like an optical puzzle, oscillates between beauty and nightmare. I use repetition to emphasize my ideas and concerns.
Question #5: What has the process of making art taught you or given you?
My practice is very process orientated, making moulds to cast objects over and over. Repetition as a means of artistic practice requires considerable patience and it is at times laborious and obsessive. Creativity often starts only when all the objects are made. I often do not know what the final outcome will be until I start arranging the objects and the sculpture slowly evolves, sometimes through a happy accident! It has taught me not to have pre- conceived ideas, to keep an open mind and to explore materials and and to take risks. I am passionate about my work and it is a privilege to explore and share my ideas with others when exhibiting.
Question #7: What keeps you going?
What keeps me going through all the repetitive casting is hope for the final outcome and most importantly, the informative reactions of the viewer when they perceive my work.
What is your artistic practice?
My work uses contextually linked objects to make sculptures and installations. When the objects are perceived by the viewer a narrative is revealed.
I am influenced by past experiences from my previous medical career where I was exposed to the suffering of refugees and much of my work stands for those who are treated as less than human. Sadly history repeats itself and the reasons for this repetition of violence through history informs my practice influenced by my wider reading of texts by Butler and Zizek.
My more recent work has concerned the social, economical and political effects of the COVID 19 pandemic form both a personal perspective as an immunocompromised artist and from a more global view. Bones are emblematic in my work. They reflect my past but most importantly represent are common mortality, temporality and fragility .
2017
Cast objects in Jesmonite, plaster, pigment, vermiculite
5 meters by 5 meters
Walked Over, was inspired by Judith Butler’s books, Precarious Lives and Frames of War, and the concept that some people are treated as less than human or “walked over” by others. It uses contextually linked objects, (bones, weapons, sex toys) to metaphorically represent different aspects of war atrocities as in the UN and House of Lords-definition.
Walked Over is a 5m x 5m floor that the viewer can walk over made of fabricated breeze blocks with embedded objects. By making the work interactive, the viewer is uncomfortably forced to confront the buried objects and their contextual connections. Arranged like an archaeological dig, it has an earthy quality. The “other” represented by the objects in the breeze blocks are hidden in a controlled system of a grid in the same way that they are ignored within society. The arrangement looks like a flag a direct reference to territory, ironic when considering the current refugee crisis.
2016
Easiflow 100 plastic.
2 meters diameter.
Ceiling Rose uses contextually linked objects, (bones, weapons, sex toys) to metaphorically represent different aspects of war atrocities as in the UN and House of Lords-definition.There is an ironic discomfiture of seeing objects that represent those seen as lesser human in this juxtaposition of being placed to decorate grand buildings owned by the very same people who have taken away their agency. The title references United Nations treaty 1021 on genocide and George Orwell’s room 101 in his book 1984.
2019
Cast Vase in Jesmonite, Jesmonite pigments. Fibreglass.Twine
180cm x 60cm x 30cm
This work was based on a red and brown glass antique Chinese vase which had fish detail in the glaze. Rather than the fish being represented in the vase, the form of the repeated vase is subverted such that it represented the qualities of the fish.
The sculpture as a whole reflects the sinusoidal motion of a fish through water. The neck of the vase represents the fin of the fish oscillating in a different plane to its body.
The bulb of the vase was reminiscent of antique glass buoys. The string is used as a play on this nautical theme representing the rope that links the buoys together. These were traditionally used to float fishing nets that capture fish in the same way that the fish were captured in the original vase detail. The red and brown colouration of the original vase have been exaggerated to reflect the colours of the artist’s goldfish. By using multiples of the repeated cast vase the whole has become greater than the sum of its parts and enduring theme in the artist’s practice.
2020
Jesmonite, Cast driftwood and objects, bandages, Red Acrylic.
50x 50 x50 cm
Beached reflects the experience of feeling depersonalised as an immunocompromised and medically shielded artist during the COVID19 pandemic Cast driftwood symbolises feeling beached, stranded at home and the combined objects relate to this autobiographical experience. Driftwood like the virus returns in waves. Fragmented doll parts represent the depersonalisation of being removed from society and the lack of agency of being told to stay inside and feeling puppet like. Cast hands and arms reference washing hands to prevent COVID-19 and the inability to embrace. Bones represent mortality and the commonality of our human fragility during this current pandemic. The sculpture is held together by bloody bandages a reference to Florence Nightingale, the NHS and the new Nightingale hospitals. The driftwood is arranged in a form resembling COVID-19 and rendered to look meat-like a reference to the wet markets where COVID19 allegedly originated. COVID19 is often artificially coloured red in electron microscope images but is also symbolic of danger. The entire sculpture is invaded by bats the supposed vector.
2020
Cast human pelvic bones. Sculpture digitally replicated.
Printed on canvas 100cm x 100cm
Artist Statement Sneeze 2020
Sneeze 2020 uses a sculpture of cast human pelvic bones arranged in a COVID19 form. The bones reflect human vulnerability and mortality during the pandemic. The sculpture is digitally repeated creating an imaginary sneeze as if COVID19 were visible spreading through the air. The image is ironically decorative and black and white. COVID 19 is so small it can neither absorb or reflect light and is actually colourless. The colour in electron microscope images often red, is artificial. Despite its size, this tiny particle has caused social, economic and political havoc to humanity.
| Where/ How can Vacant Museum viewers see more of your work and where can they purchase it? |
| Future Exhibitions: April 15 to May 14, 2021 ,The Forge, 397-411 Westferry Rd, Island Gardens, Isle of Dogs, London E14 3AE 14 sept – 20th sept 2021, Exhibition Continuum, Oxo gallery , Oxo Tower London SE1 9PH Fresh Air Sculpture Exhibition postponed to 2022. Quenington GL7 5BN Represented by Florence Contemporary Gallery available at https://www.florencecontemporary.com/artists Bickerton Grace gallery: https://www.bickertongracegallery.com/sally-de-courcy Saatchi Art: https://www.saatchiart.com/decourcyb |