BARBARA BEYER

North House Gallery is delighted to present this exhibition of sculpture, drawings and prints by Barbara Beyer. The title 'unterwegs' in her native German seems to have more emotional resonance than the English prosaic 'underway'. She says that it implies that one notices, appreciates and processes things on the way. There does seem to be an unusually joyful excitement in the inspiration and execution of her work.

The earliest pieces in this exhibition are the large monoprints on mulberry paper of the beyond the fence series. They are predominantly drypoints but with some block printing and repeated folding and unfolding of the paper in the printing process. With titles such as allotments, beds, many paths, small gate, they represent her interest in human interventions in landscape and how to interpret a sense of place, real or imagined.

The new sculptural works selected for this exhibition are all in clay although she has worked her way through a wide range of materials, from paper cuts to slate and mud, wood, plywood, plaster, adobe, clay and metal. She freely mixes traditional craft and manufacturing practices with experimental and unconventional processes. Her finished work visibly contains traces of process and making, mistakes and remedies, imagination and play. She is clearly drawn to minimal and archaic forms, natural and manmade. The 23 stoneware sculptures are from three series: boulders–builders; structures of support and underbellies with a separate one called reconfigured–supporting fragments.

The related ink drawings show the same degree of freedom and control as do the fifty small paper monoprints of elemental landscapes called for a little distance.

Barbara Beyer was born in Germany, studied sculpture with Prof Ansgar Nierhoff at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz from 1993 to 1997. In 1998 she moved to Edinburgh where she had a studio at the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop until 2002 when she moved to London. Barbara has extensive experience in public engagement and participatory artwork, has taken part in exhibitions nationally and internationally, taken up artist residencies and collaborated on public commissions in Switzerland, Norway and the UK. She is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors and of Rochester Square ceramic studios and artist-in-residence at Buckinghamshire New University, where she also teaches in Foundation. She was recently shortlisted for the 2021 Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize.