Alicia French’s multi-disciplinary work includes drawing, painting, sculpture and ceramics. She explores the uncanniness of everyday life, extracting the strangeness from the ordinary to investigate the known and unknown, comfort and discomfort, the familiar and the unfamiliar – abstracting, rebirthing and reinventing the natural world around us.

Inspired by her Isle of Wight surroundings, pondering the uncanny – including deep sea creatures, phobias, micro-organisms, the five senses, and optical illusions, she also collects natural materials – where particular forms and details first sketched, are brought into three dimensional forms.

The materiality of form, and the sensory tactile nature of materials used are as important as her meditative process of making. For ‘Unknown Species’ she has used clay to explore organic and otherworldly forms: incorporating patterns and textures onto the apparent fleshy and visceral surfaces, and using the long meditative process of Coiling clay. The organic tentacle-like spikes appear to be growing and trying to reach out, alluding to an alive species within its own ecosystem.

Art Instagram: @french.alicia

Free & accessible daily 5 April - 1 May 2023 Shop open Mon-Sat 10-12.30, 1.30-4pm. All work available for purchase.