matresence, II, 2024
Ink and moon gold on Japanese papers
57 x 38 cm
In pregnancy, I’m underwater; the boundaries of my own body become fluid and mutable. In the studio, imagery falls away and my mind’s eye turns inward, attuning to the changes and flickers of new life within.
Matresence is a state of constant metamorphosis, from slow, glacial shifts to violent ruptures. This new series of works uses the ancient Japanese art of suminagashi, a process of floating inks on water, to express something of these sensations and transformations.
– May 2024
The suminagashi process in the studio. Photos: Michael O’Farrell. June 2024.
With dancer-choreographer, Patricia Okenwa, and composer Quinta on a residency with Wainsgate Dances in Hebden Bridge. August 2023.
Stabat Mater: From Taking Care & Churning, a sharing at Siobhan Davies Dance Studios, London, with dancer-choreographer Patricia Okenwa, composer Quinta and dancer Estela Merlos. The performance followed a residency with Wainsgate Dances in Hebden Bridge and workshops at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London, earlier that year. 8th September 2023.
A short film created by Blue Shop Cottage, London, on the occasion of BACCHANALIA, Forrest’s solo exhibition in 2021.
1st - 8th September 2021
Blue Shop Cottage presents BACCHANALIA
a solo exhibition of works on paper by Stephanie Forrest.
Read the press release here.
Forrest was recently invited to contribute to MATERIAL No. 3: Spring - Summer 2021. A magazine published by Siobhan Davies Studios, MATERIAL aims to nurture dialogue around dance, choreography and contemporary artistic practices. Forrest’s essay, The Dancing Line, explores the influence dance has had on her practice and the making of a new body of work for BACCHANALIA, her solo show at Blue Shop Cottage, Camberwell. You can read her essay here.
A recipient of the ACS Drawing Prize in 2019, Forrest was featured in the Artists’ Collecting Society 'Artist Spotlight' series in 2020. Read her interview here.
The drawings, paintings and monotypes of Stephanie Forrest share one essential characteristic. In them you feel the hand and eye and heart are searching, transitive. They are not works in search of stasis, the perfect singular moment, but seem to be a response to the world as it unfolds… And the work is deeply affecting. This moment is here and then it passes. Et in Arcadia Ego: we are here for such a short while. Beautiful mutability is a sort of mortality too. – Edmund de Waal
making space, December 2020. Forrest’s work was included in a group show hosted by Edmund de Waal at his studio in South London. Read his text and the exhibition pamphlet here.
