Same Sky: Sarah Duncan & Lucy May Schofield
23 Oct - 18 Dec
Same Sky predominantly brings together the work of two artists working in different parts of the UK united by their subject matter and contrasts their individual approaches to reflecting and interacting with the natural environment through their practice.
Lucy May Schofield works in collaboration with expansive landscapes and dark skies, marking seasonal shifts with paper, ink and wood to connect and convene with nature. Observing the way in which time behaves in remote places has resonated in ritualistic acts of paper and print making. Meditating on the earth’s rotation, the phases of the moon and our relationship to light and time inspire performative acts. The work seeks to turn our attention to the temporal creating a dialogue with transience and impermanence.
Schofield graduated from the London College of Printing in 2002. In 2016 she was awarded a one-year residency with Visual Arts in Rural Communities in rural Northumberland, where she is currently based. She has attended three residency programmes in Japan to study traditional and contemporary wood-block printmaking techniques with master printers. Recent work has been presented at The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 3331 Arts Chiyoda Tokyo, IMPACT 11 Hong Kong, and the University of Hawaii, where she was the recipient of the Awagami Paper Prize. In 2020 she was awarded the Flourish Award for excellence in printmaking. Her work is held in public and private collections including Tate Britain, Yale Centre for British Art, MIT and Stanford University.
Sarah Duncan is influenced by forms and light invisible to the naked eye.
Duncan seeks beauty in the realms of science, astronomy, microscopy utilising optical technology which allows us to glimpse the unseeable. Her work reflects upon these technological revelations, and tries to grasp what would be unknowable without them.
'My printmaking revels in time and speed, abstracted by telescopes peering into the deep past or microscopes delving into hidden worlds. Throughout history the night sky has been a screen for our projected dreams. My work seeks to reflect this screen, and to find others to illuminate.
Scientific studies are currently focusing less on the possibility and more on the certainty and speed with which climate change is taking place. My practice is not obviously engaged with worldly issues, working directly to transform the global scale of climate change into a human narrative. But more to have it subtly resonate within my work.
I continue to explore moments of transition and turbulence in the landscape. I choose to show the beauty rather than the devastation, a celebration of what we stand to lose.'
Sarah Duncan lives and works in Bristol and prints at Spike Print Studio. Having originally studied Textile Design, Duncan spent 10 years working within the Art Department in feature films before passing her Masters degree in Print with Distinction at UWE in Bristol in 2015. Recent work has included 2018 and 2021 Royal Academy Summer Shows and her work was included in the Lumen Print Collection for Newcastle's Helix development in 2020. Duncan has completed residencies at Sim Gallery in Reykjavik and the Arteles Silent Awareness Residency in Finland.