Jo Dennis

Lives and works in London, UK

Artist statement

We're rarely just one thing. We often hold contradictory states simultaneously—strength and fragility, celebration and exhaustion, disorder and control. My work attempts to give those contradictions a physical form. Rather than describing specific narratives, it creates conditions for association. Through painting, welding and assembly, I create painting and sculpture in which surface and structure become inseparable. Working predominantly with found objects, textiles and steel, material and process become the means through which emotional experience takes form. Military surplus tent fabric recurs throughout my practice because of its capacity for transformation. Its seams, openings and fastenings are as significant as its surface, allowing two-dimensional works to extend beyond the stretcher and into three-dimensional space. Rather than seeking balance or resolution, I create work that exists in a continual state of becoming, held somewhere between construction and collapse.

Artwork