About
My multidisciplinary practice invites viewers through sculpture, drawing and print to encounter plasticity within a sensual landscape of forms. Materiality becomes a way to challenge authority and probe confinement, fragility and collapse, generating tensions between interior and exterior boundaries.
I work with a raw palette of reinforced concrete, petroleum jelly, wax, resin, bitumen, fibres, and glass, often sourced from overlooked margins. These materials embody tensions: viscous and dry, rigid and soft, enduring and fragile. Cast, woven, or plaited, they echo and parody architectural language—skeletal frameworks, fencing, scaffolding, columns that sag or stretch into organic form. By unsettling sculptural and architectural codes, I search for moments where structure resists its own certainty.
While the built environment remains central, my practice also turns to marginal wastelands and vacant plots that slip beneath the social landscape. In particular, I draw on the spatial logic of gay cruising to understand the dynamics of such places. These “lurky” spaces, a term borrowed from Stephen Willats, are unstable thresholds that form both the conceptual and material ground of my work. Here, queerness becomes a method of defiance, a way of reimagining systems, materials, and spatial codes.
Following the entanglement of a blade of grass or the precarious loop of a found rubber band, my work translates the sensual charge of human encounters within these landscapes. Like sudden arousal or the prickle of goosebumps, anticipation and desire are carried through sculptural processes into abstract form, not as fixed objects, but as sites of transformation and resistance.
Photo: @studio_adamson
CV
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b. 1976, Florence, Italy. Lives and works in London, UK.
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Artist Glass and Casting Fellow at City & Guilds of London Art School 2023/2025.
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Education
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2022-23 City & Guilds of London Art School - MA Fine Art - Full Time
2021-22 Royal Drawing School - Attended classes in Drawing full-time
2019 Royal Academy of Arts- 8-week course “The art of fashion”
2015-16 UCL – Institute of Education - PGCE in Art and Design Secondary Education
2011-14 Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna, Italy BA (Hons) in Art, Drama and Music Studies
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Solo Exhibition and Presentation
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2024 Valentino Vannini at The Phoenix Garden, The Phoenix Garden, London
Penetrable Boundaries, Standpoint Gallery, London
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Group Exhibition
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2025 New Contemporaries, ICA, London
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Postgraduate Show, City & Guilds of London School, London
The Lamb of Tartary, 2 Beuclerc Road, London
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THISS 2025, The Hide Artist Retreat, Stroud
Art with Pride, City Belonging Project, Sheffield Haworth, London
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Acting Out, Ex Voto Gallery, London
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Terence Higgins Trust 2025 Auction, Christie's, London
2024 New Contemporaries, Karst Gallery, Plymouth
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an eXhibition of SMALL things with BIG ideas, White Conduit Projects, London​​
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Uncarved Block, Unbleached Silk, Meeting Point Projects, London
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Dawn is now once again, GPS Greenfield Project Space, London
Unknown Territory, SET Lewisham, London
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2023 NOW Introducing 2023, Studio West Gallery, London
Surprise, Somers Town Public Art, Somers Gallery London
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MA Show, City & Guilds of London Art School - MA Fine Art
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Interim, City & Guilds of London Art School - MA Fine Art
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2016 Final Show, UCL, IoE Institute of Education, London
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A dog in the playground, Peckham Platform
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2015 Candid Art Trust, Angel, London, UK
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Residency
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2023-24 Artist Residency, Standpoint Gallery, London 13 Nov - 25 Jan
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2019 Atelier Meridian, Printing Workshop, Portland, USA, 29th Jul - 4th Aug
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Awards
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2023 Sculpture Award, Studio West Gallery, London
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2023 Artist Residency - Standpoint Gallery, City & Guilds of London Art School London
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Press/Features
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2025 Creating their own ecosystem, The Art Newspaper, Anna Brady, Thu 17 July
Taking Air: gathered notes on walking in cities, Orla Carolin, Sat 5 July
Everyone Is Invited, Resonance FM 104.4, Alessandro Paiano, Thu 15 May
New Contemporaries review – Kafka portals, concrete phalluses and a Muppet
Pasolini, The Guardian, Jonathan Jones, Wed 15 January
New Contemporaries review — Gen Z artists give us reason to be cheerful, The annual exhibition, held this year at the ICA in
London, spotlights artists who are looking at the world with a wry and gentle wit, The Times, Tue 14 January
Want to find the art stars of the future? They’re at the ICA right now with ‘New Contemporaries’, Time Out, Eddy Frankel, Wed
15 January
2024 Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024, Made in Plymouth, Linda Bell
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2023 The Gift of the Surprise in the Community, Trebuchet Magazine, 11th December​ Studio Visit Valentino Vannini, Blanco Gallery,
8th December
City & Guilds MA Show 2023 Review, London Art Roundup, 3rd September
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2016 A dog in the playground, Freelands Foundation and UCL/Institute of Education
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