Candida Powell-Williams
London, UK – Sculpture
Bell idol (conflicted), 2020
Ceramics and glazes, pigmented jesmonite, copper wire
30 x 12 x 15 cm
£900
Powell-Williams’s sculptural landscapes are often a response to researching the slippage that occurs to the meaning of historical artefacts over time, aiming to confront our relationship to memory and storytelling. She manipulates historical narratives, plucking references from disparate eras, folding them into the present and condensing them into a singular experience.
Ophidian’s sequences (7 cadences), series 1 of 3, 2020
jesmonite, polystyrene, ceramic
100 x 50 x 10 cm
£1250
Ophidian’s sequences (5 cadences), series 1 of 4, 2020
jesmonite, polystyrene, ceramic
50 x 30 x 10 cm
£650
Using a range of materials and textures CPW references the vast language of the ever shifting meaning of symbols from architecture, industrial inventions to talisman, rendering them physical in modular forms or prop-like sculptures characterised by their wobbly geometry and apparently dissolving edges. Fabricated in sweet colour gradients the surfaces appear worn down like disneyfied relics. Fleeting performances explore gesture, touch and the permeable boundary of our bodies to the external environment and kinship to the animal kingdom. These interactions are documented in stuttering layered animations permeating the work with notions of time, presence and absence and addressing the changing nature of sculpture, performance and storytelling in the digital age.
Artist’s Bio
Candida Powell-Williams (born 1984, lives in London) graduated from the RCA, London in 2011. Selected exhibitions and performances include: “The Gates of Apophenia,” Bosse and Baum London (2019), “Command Lines,” Void Gallery, Northern Ireland (2019) “Lessness, still quorum,” performance, Serpentine Galleries, London (2018); “Boredom and its Acid Touch,” Frieze Live, London (2017); “Tongue Town,” Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo (2017); “Cache,” Art Night Associate Programme, London (2017); PIC performance festival, Melbourne, Australia (2016); “Coade’s Elixir,” Hayward Gallery, London (2014). In 2018 Powell-Williams was artist in residence at the Warburg Institute London, was awarded the Mother Art Prize in 2018 and in 2013 was recipient of the Sainsbury Scholarship at the BSR, Rome. In 2019 common-editions published Powell-William’s tarot deck and artist book. In 2021 Powell-Williams will have a major new solo exhibition at Southwark Park Galleries London.
