Jill Randall is a sculptor based at Prospect Studios and exhibits her work nationally and internationally. She is a Member of The Royal British Society of Sculptors and the European Sculpture Network. Jill Randall recently exhibited work in the Venice Biennale in the PAPER Pavilion, ’Personal Structures’, Palazzo Mora, and ‘No Particular Place to Go’, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester.
Group exhibitions include ‘Open Spaces’, Kubaii, Bocholt, Germany, Artists Space, New York, Cornerhouse, Manchester, Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool and Galerie de Leones, Porto.
Recent solo shows include ‘Aftermath’, Geevor Tin Mine World Heritage Museum, Cornwall, (2016), ‘Jill Randall At The MerzBarn, Cumbria,(2014) ,’Place/Displace’, Touchstones, Rochdale, (2013) and ”Golden Venture” National Waterfront Museum, Swansea. (2011).
Artists Residencies include Parys Mountain Copper Mine, Anglesey, (2007-10), Magnesium Elektron/The Lowry, Salford, (2001-3), Grizedale Arts (1999), and a major commission for the Irwell Sculpture Trail (2001), along with international residencies in Spain, Australia and Portugal.
Jill Randall has an important parallel practice working on major public art projects in collaboration with other professionals, 3 of which have won national awards. She also has an important printmaking practice working at the Alan Birch Printmaking Workshop at Prospect Studios. Jill Randall is also a Senior Lecturer and Researcher on the B.A. Fine Art Course at the University of Salford.
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“I am a sculptor working primarily with the metals of steel, lead and copper.
“I have recently focussed on artists residencies in industrial settings, especially historic metal-mining sites.My work often reveals the sublime and beautiful, the poetic and resonant in bleak and unpromising places, involving making work with and from post-industrial or ‘spoiled’ environments. The idea of what constitutes ‘heritage’, and who it is for, is contested territory. Recent research visits to Australia and Mexico have reinforced the multiple and complex social and historical questions arising from preservation-or not-of industrial sites. I focus on what interests me as an artist but use my practice to quietly question and expose some of these issues.
“My sculpture practice tends to manifest itself in quite different-looking works, but the core ideas remain constant:-Making connections between disparate objects and places, the continued relevance and significance of the object in a digital age, exploring the nature of time expressed through process on material, and the revelation of the histories and stories behind forgotten objects or lost places .
“My work is driven by ideas, but exploits the qualities and associations of materials, mainly metals and found objects, and often involves the recycling of materials invested with history and narrative through their past use.
“I enjoy playing with, and subverting the conventions and values of modernist abstract sculpture, the ‘truth to materials’ and traditional sculpture techniques.”
Prospect Studio, 137-141 Burnley Road East, Waterfoot, BB4 9DF, Lancs
e: jill@jillrandall.co.uk
w: www.jillrandall.co.uk
