Drawings and Etchings of Ezo by Gemma Anderson

Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2007 Gemma Anderson has been combining research, drawing and printmaking. She was artist in residence in Ireland, France and Japan where she collected imagery from both her personal surroundings and formal archives with an immediate need to record, and lay bare her mnemonic devices.

Anderson exhibits her journey from Ireland to France to Japan in her recording of the people and their natural history, combining botanical and geological studies, portraits and landscapes, which are recorded straight onto her etching plate. During her time in residencies, Anderson created an archive of the natural phenomena of a particular time and place. Her works display a remarkable convergence between “a scientific eye searching to intimately know a face, a leaf, a rock, animal or insect” and “an imagination that plays jovially with the hurdles of reality” (Juliette Giudicelli, Art Writer, Paris 2009). “Gemma Anderson’s work is transparently fabulous – like a good fable, it seems to run through a series of ‘as ifs’: as if we could start again – observing, possessing the world for the first time” (Francisco Lobo, Artist and Writer, London 2007)

Gemma Anderson graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2007 and has since been artist in residence in Japan, France and Ireland. Recent Exhibitions include “An Experiment in Collaboration”, Jerwood Space, London, “Drawing Ezo”, Sapporo, Japan and “Isolated”, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast. This year Gemma is Artist in Residence at Jerwood Visual Arts, and has been selected for the ACME Fire Station Residency, London, 2010- 2015. Gemma’s practice combines research, drawing and printmaking. She is currently working on a Wellcome Trust Arts Award, exploring the history of psychiatric ideas, natural history collections and divinatory sciences.

Click here to visit Gemma’s website.

Introduction by Shonagh Manson, Director of the Jerwood Charitable Foundation