Rosie Leventon
Rosie Leventon
Leventon graduated Central St Martins with a degree in sculpture, following which she has received multiple awards for her designs and contributions to the art community including Henry More Sculpture Trust and Felix and Spear Exhibition Award. She has exhibited work internationally, which is often site-specific environmental installations that are featured in numerous publications. A current series of architectural pieces is called Up the Duff – ideas for this series come from vernacular architecture – everything from Pigeon Cots to Buddhist temples, the kind of thing we probably don’t see in our everyday lives. She has been using reclaimed plywood to create her most recent series ‘Up the duff’. She aims to create a dialogue between industrial material and the hand-crafted pieces. This is a bronze cast of such work, immortalising a structure similar to many which have naturally past.
Bronze
Up the duff
Ideas for this series ‘Up the duff’ came from culturally-specific architecture – everything from pigeon cots to Buddhist temples, things that we don’t frequently see in our everyday Western lives. This is a bronze cast of such work, referencing some ancient structures found in faraway countries. She used scrap mass-produced building material, plywood to make the form, and raw pigment in the bronze patina. She aims to create a dialogue between industrial material and hand-crafted pieces. Earlier and larger versions of this motif are now sited at La Fortezza del Girifalco in Tuscany
Artist statement
Rosie Leventon
I make sculptural installations, for indoors and environmental art in the landscape. Experimenting with new materials and using them in innovative ways, such as Celotex Insulation, central heating pipes, recycled mobile phones and paperbacks, as well as more durable stone, water earth and wood. Some pieces are designed to promote meditation on vulnerability and on the illusion of solidity and permanence in life – one of the continuing themes in my work. Many of the works address green issues and reference the lost, hidden or forgotten.
Artist CV
Rosie Leventon
Exhibitions include:
London:
- Serpentine Gallery
- Art at Broadgate, Broadgate Centre
- Re-Siting Installation, Royal College of Art
- Wake, Chisenhale Gallery
- Guest Artist, The Independent Artists Fair, The Rag Factory
- Et Pendant ce Tempsand Unfold, Nettie Horn Gallery
- The London Group, Camden Arts Centre
- Battersea Arts Centre
- Concrete & Glass, Shoreditch Town Hall
- MODA Outsize, Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Barnet
- Royal Society of Sculptors
- 3 x winner of the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, Orchard Place E14 0JY
- Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy
- Eyestorm, Bankside
- Parallax, Fieldgate Gallery, Whitechapel
Rest of the UK:
- Ripple of Light– BLANK _ University Centre Leeds
- Prospects & Interiors– Recent Acquisitions of Sculptor’s Drawings, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
- Excavating the Present, Kettles Yard, Cambridge
- Undercurrent, Fabrica, Brighton
- Glasgow Garden Festival, Glasgow
- On Site, International Sculpture Symposium, Yorkshire Sculpture Park
- EDGE 90, International Biennale of Innovative Contemporary Art, Newcastle
- International Festival of Glass, The Ruskin Glass Centre, Stourbridge, West Midlands
- Springing Alive, Manchester City Art Gallery
- Forensic Evidence, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Wolverhampton
- Forensic Evidence, Mappin Art Gallery Sheffield
International:
- Convergence International Arts Festival, Rhode Island, USA
- Women in Visual Arts, Erector Square Gallery, Connecticut, USA
- BECA Foundation, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
- Solo exhibition, Passerelle Centre d’Art, Brittany, France
- Eaumages, Festival of Installations, Villedieu Cultural Centre Paris, France
- Rosie Leventon at Brandts Klaedefabrik, solo exhibition, Odense, Denmark
- Local 01, Holland
- Galleria L’Affiche, Milan, Italy
- Arte Laguna Prize, Venice, Italy
- La Fortezza del Girifalco, Cortona, Tuscany, Italy
- Mirades sobre el Museu, Museo d’Arte Contemporani, Barcelona
- Der Pfalzgalerie, Kaisers Lautern, Germany
- Notes from Underground, Dostoyevsky Museum, St Petersburg, Russia
- Prague Festival of Contemporary Art, Czech Republic
- Centraline Museum, Lodz, Poland
- EWAAC Exhibition, Tokyo, Japan
- Frankfurt Art Fair, Germany
- Cheltenham Open Drawing Exhibition touring to Kunsthalle Sierre, Switzerland
Public Art Commissions:
- b-side festival, Portland Museum, Isle of Portland, Dorset
- “Now & then’ . a permanent earthwork with planting from 2012 –
- Woodland Trust, Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Woods, Leicestershire
- New Visions of the Sea, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (now permanently in the Queens House at the side of main Museum)
- 2 commissions for King’s Wood, Stour Valley Arts, Kent
- Irwell Sculpture Trail, Manchester
- Major Award, Portland Quarry & Sculpture Trust, Dorset
- Art in Exile, Camden Arts Centre London
- 3D 89,2 commissions for Gunnersbury Park and Watermans Gallery, London
- Views across the Pond, Blickling Hall, Norfolk
- The Stephenson Trail, Sunderland
Competitions and Awards
- Royal Society of Sculptors Award 2021
- Felix & Spear Award winner 2020
- Arts Council Award
- Rouse Kent Award for Public Art
- EWACC Online Art Competition, 1st Prize
- Mark Tanner Award for Sculpture
- British Council Travelling Awards
- Portland Clifftop Sculpture Park Major Award
- The Elephant Trust
- Henry Moore Sculpture Trust
- London Arts Bursary
- EWA East / West Artists Award (Installation)
- London Docklands Development Corporation
Books include:
- Destination Art by Amy Dempsey 2021
- The State of Art – Installation & Site Specific #2, Bare Hill Publishing, Sept 2015
- Thinking is Making, Presence and Absence in Contemporary Sculpture edited by Michael Taylor, published by Black Dog, April 2013
- Sculpture Parks and Trails of England by Alison Stace
- Meditative Spaces by Michael Freeman, Universe Publishing, Rizzoli, NY
- King’s Wood: A Context edited by Sandra Drew and Liz Kent, published by Stour Valley Arts
- Fabrica the First 10 Years introduction by Caroline Collier, essays by Matthew Miller, Liz Whitehead, Nannette Aldred and Phyllida Shaw
- Installation Art by Nicolas de Oliveira, Nicola Oxley, Michael Petry, published by Thames and Hudson
- The Dictionary of Artists in Britain since 1945 by David Buckman published by Art Dictionaries
