Anna will kindly tell us about her work, process, and techniques. There will be time for questions too.

Anna Gillespie was born in Surrey in 1964. She studied Philosophy, Politics, Economics at Wadham College, Oxford and then International Relations at the London School of Economics. In 1988, Anna returned to sculpture taking a City and Guilds in Stone Masonry and Carving in Bath before going to the Centro d'Arte, Verrocchio, Italy to work as studio assistant to sculptor, Nigel Konstam. Anna then completed an MA in Fine and Media Arts in Cheltenham.

Her more recent work is probably best described as biomorphic. Following her fascination with life-casting over decades, she now has a more tentative approach towards a less literal representation of the body, attempting to capture inner experience as opposed to outer appearance. Ironically perhaps, part of this desire to capture felt experience rather than observed appearance, seems to involve the ‘accuracy’ of representation and detail that body casting allows. The lived experience of wrinkles and pores, creases and rolls, tissue and joints are captured in fascinating detail by alginate. The ‘classical’ result is somehow pleasingly at odds with the brutal reality of our imperfect bodies, especially as they age.

Anna’s work is in the collections of Chippenham Museum, The Prudential, Burghley House Sculpture Park, The Somerset Museum, Museo Arte Contemporata Sicilia, Bodrum Sculpture Park in Turkey (Omer Koc Collection) and also in private collections throughout America, the Middle East and Europe.