Jo Bellamy - Biography and statement
Having spent most of my life in Kent, I now live and work in Norfolk, alongside my solo practice, which is mainly sculptural, I am also a member of the 2Faulty collective which has a playful, chance based, approach. My solo practice is a process of thinking through making and of allowing chance practice to create opportunities for the unknown and unexpected to arise. Recently I have been working in bronze, however, I am currently exploring other materials. Photography and collage also play a part in my practice. Use of light and mirrors allow work to expand beyond its physical boundaries, fragmenting and distorting space, and through the use of shadows, allowing the viewer to be both inside and outside the work. My sculptural practice also sits alongside an interest in intergenerational collaborative and community practice, working with nursing home residents to share memories and experiences through creative practice, across generational divides.
We are contained in many ways throughout our lives, contained within our family, our home, our memories, within the façade presented to the world. My practice explores this through materiality, and the spaces and tensions between, and in, those materials. I am intrigued by our capacity to exist in multiple dissonant states simultaneously, to feel both contained and excluded, at once safe and threatened. For memory to be not just of the past, but also of the present, and of an imagined future.
Experimenting with casting fragile and soft materials in bronze has allowed me to explore the point at which the process and material fail, finding the tension the material communicates at that point. The use of suspension, repetition, contrasting materials and geometric structure, contrasted with fluidity and precariousness in the method of display are used to express simultaneous multiple states of being.
Education
BA Fine Art: First Class - 2022, Norwich University of the Arts
Exhibitions
2022 2Faulty Collaborative Exhibition & Workshops. ArtSpace on the Prom, Cromer.
Free Range 2022. Selective exhibition. Truman Brewery, 91 Brick Lane, E1 6QL
British Art Medal Society Student Medal Project 2021, selective exhibition. New Ashgate Gallery, Farnham.
2021 British Art Medal Society Student Medal Project 2021, selective exhibition. Makers Guild, Craft in the Bay, Cardiff.
A Room of One’s Own. Group exhibition. designermakers21 Gallery, Diss, Norfolk.
2020 Centenary of Caring. Group exhibition. NUA Virtual Gallery Project Space X
Home Crisis. Selective student virtual exhibition.
Cacophony. Selective student virtual exhibition, NUA Virtual Gallery Project Space X
Unrealised. Selective staff and student and external artist exhibition. Curated by Carl Rowe. NUA Virtual Gallery Project Space X
Essentials. Selective staff and student and external artist exhibition. Curated by Carl Rowe. NUA Virtual Gallery Project Space X
Play With Me II. Collaborative entry in selective exhibition. St Marys Works, Norwich.
Anything You Can Do I Can Butcher. NUA Staff/Student Exhibition, PS1 St Georges
2018 Pure Form Sculpture Group Exhibition. Kings Mile, Canterbury
2017 Pure Form Sculpture Group Exhibition. Burgate, Canterbury
2016 Pure Form Sculpture Group Exhibition. Fishslab Gallery, Whitstable
Awards
2022 Norfolk Contemporary Art Society Sculpture Prize.
2022 British Art Medal Society Student Medal Project 2022, Merit Award.
Workshops
2022 Expanded Collage. 3D Collage workshop delivered as part of the 2Faulty Exhibition , ArtSpace on the Prom, Cromer.
Riotous Order II. Workshop to create a large scale collaborative piece, followed buy an exhibition of subsequent individual works. delivered for the NUA Interchange programme.
How Still is Still Life. A drawing workshop created and delivered for the NUA Interchange programme.
2021 Paint Out the Pandemic. A collaborative paint event with staff and residents at Brooklands Care Home, Drayton, Norfolk.
2020 Riotous Order. Workshop to create a large scale collaborative piece, followed buy an exhibition of subsequent individual works.
Projects
2022 Binding Memories. Ongoing solo project with individual care home residents creating artist books in response to their memories.
2021 Yesterday Today. Group collaborative project with NorseCare, NUA students and elderly residents in a supported living facility, resulting in personalised biographical colouring books created in response to individual residents’ life story and memories.
Commissions
2021 Illustration for a winning entry in the 2021 Norfolk Young Writers Competition.
2020 Illustration for a winning entry in the 2020 Norfolk Young Writers Competition.