Ashleigh Fisk is a recent graduate of Slade School of Fine Art. Her work focuses on history, myth and folkloric traditions, seeking cyclical loops of thinking and making revealed through relics and artefacts. She uses the language of ceramics, a practise synonymous with human creation and mimesis, as human bodies and beliefs are imbued and solidified onto the clay surface throughout time.
Currently, her work explores the veil between palpable and imaginative worlds; a meeting point of temporalities, the threshold of which is often deeply connected to the landscape and the deep memory/time/history it holds. These anarchic realms often are devoid of visible bodies but through the importance of place and creation of objects relating to an unknown function, a body, a human presence is always suggested. Via the work, the audience are centred in a narrative to which they are not privy, the objects of which only exist within this specific space. Both familiar and unfamiliar to the spectator, the objects are alienated as their function is unknown and ultimately futile, simultaneously belonging to a mythological, but also conservational space. The installation attempts to subtly mimic the liminality of a museum space where objects express the duality of art and utilitarian use, made by past hands, whilst also collapsing time and narratives in their proximity to each other. This lastly highlights omnipresent important of craft throughout my wider practise. The quietness and subtlety of the craft encourage the viewer to question the works placement in the here and now…or the peripheral corners of time and space.
b. 1997, Kent/East Sussex, lives and works in South East England.
Education
BA (Hons) Slade School of Fine Art 2017-2021
Employment
2023 Stock Production for Various (Wag and Wool, King John Nursary, Starlight Books)
2022-23 Mid Week Makes, Watts Gallery and Artists Village
2022 Gardenware Stock production for Watts Gallery and Artist Village/freelance ceramic production work.
2021 Fabrication for K.S Ceramics, Limited addition line of ceramics for Liberties, london.
2020-present Private Throwing and hand building lessons
Private Studio
2019-20 Maker and Admin/ Manager at Hoxton Gardenware
2018-present Freelance Life model
Exhibitions
2024 ‘I will live many years in this Room’, with writing from Gwen Dupré, SET Lewisham, London
2022 South East Open Studios
2022 ‘Conjure’, Arusha Gallery, Bruton, Curated by Chantel Powell
2021 Slade School of Fine Art Degree show/Online showcase
2021 Friends with Benefits, Safe House One, curated by Abi Hempsey
2021 Underpinned by the Movements of Freighters, The Florence Trust, curated by Joe Moss
2020 Tate Lates, Hackoustic
2019 ‘Wave 3 (Cancelled?)’ Film by Edward Smyth
The Barbican, Stims: Towards a Neurodiverse Cinema (2024)
ICA New Creatives
ICA,BFI,BBC
2019 33 Bridges
5-6 Cork St
2019 Tate Lates,
Hackoustic
2019 Foragers of the Forshore, Totally Thames, Oxo Tower Barge House
2019 Sound Club presents: SOUP
Slade school of Fine Art
2019 Feast of fools
Battersea park
2018-19 Crossspace III, DIY space London
2018 Hackoustic, Iklectic Art Lab
2018 Chisenhale Gallery, Into the wild, Grow Hackney
2018 Young Modulous Collective
Residencies
2021-22 Ceramicist in Residence at Watts Gallery and Artist Village, Compton
2019 Rochester square Ceramic studio residency/ collaboration
Workshops and teaching
2020-present Freelance ceramics teaching
2021-22 x4 Watts Gallery and Artists Village Mid-week Makes, Tile production workshops for permanent installation.
2019 Camden Festival ceramics workshop for Rochester square
2019 Mudlarking workshop
2018-19 Life Drawing tutor, London School of Economics
2017-18 Life Drawing tutor, Crowborough Fine Arts society
Radio
2019 Smokey by Ashleigh Fisk and Adam Paruossos, Radiophrenia
Featured Publications
2024 Free London, DACS
2022 Artist Studio Museum Network Interview: https://www.artiststudiomuseum.org/blog/ashleigh-fisk-artist-in-residence/
2017 Hiss Mag, Artist feature, March edition
Assistant work
2018 Artists assistant to Adam Paroussos/ Bamboo Mustard
2017-18 Slade School of Fine Art technology store, technician
2015-17 Assistant and runner to Art and Artefact imaging (cultural heritage photography)
2015-17 Artist assistant and runner to artist/ Photographer/ Fashion Anna fox 2015-2017
