Lucy Gregory (UK, 1994) is a British artist based in London and Buckinghamshire. She is a recent graduate of the Royal College of Art and The Ruskin School of Art. Working in sculpture, photography and drawing, she creates immersive, large-scale, kinetic systems of objects or environments that play with themes of agency and materiality and flatness. Lucy has exhibited work at FBA Futures, Seventeen and Arthill Gallery. She received the Gilbert Bayes Trust Grant, The School of Fine Arts and Humanities Art Criticism Prize and The Gibbs Prize in Fine Art. Fractured sets or props are activated: the inhuman and the human intertwined in a bizarre and comic realisation. Images are extruded and re-contextualised back into uncanny objects from the flatness of the screen, creating surreal collages that complicate a relation between materiality and virtuality. Lucy explores the agency of materials and images beyond the hands of the maker, taking inspiration from misbehaving assemblages and physical forces in the cartoon landscape. Uncanny laws and un-explained forces are pitted against the predictive schema of scientific rationalism. Seemingly inanimate objects and traps possess a strange sentience allowing them to become characters in their own right within the narrative. The cartoon landscape perhaps acts as a parallel of our own world – tapping into a contemporary anxiety concerning a loss of control of human agency in society, as geopolitical, technological and ecological narratives are marked by uncertainty.
Selected Exhibitions
2019
Pareidolia, The Space Station Gallery and Daniel Benjamin Gallery, London, UK
The Young Contemporary Talent Purchase Prize, The Cello Factory, London, UK
Guts Gallery Opening Exhibition, Guts Gallery, London, UK
FBA Futures 2019, Mall Galleries, London, UK
2018
Recent Graduates' Exhibition, Affordable Art Fair, 2018, Battersea Park, London, UK
SHOW, Degree Show Royal College of Art, London, UK
Too Much Information, Seventeen Gallery, London, UK
Disrupt, Subject Matter Online Exhibition
SMOG, Arthill Gallery, London, UK
House Warming- Open Studio, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2017
#33 Annual Open Exhibition, CGP Gallery, London, UK
It Is What It Isn't , The Big Shed, Iken, Suffolk, UK
What Is That Thing?, The Architecture Foundation, Royal College of Art, London, UK
Borders-Borders, Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland, UK
WIPWIP, work in progress show, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2016
Borders-Borders, Royal College of Art, London, UK
RUSKIN.SHOW, Degree Show, Oxford, UK
Made to Destroy, The Jam Factory, Oxford, UK
FREE ALE, New College, Oxford, UK
APIARY, St Catherine's College, Oxford, UK
2015
Six Figures Getting Sick, New College Cloisters and Chapel, Oxford, UK
2014
Edgar Wind Society, Freuds, Oxford, UK
Ruskin First Year Show, Oxford, UK
The Garden Exhibition, New College, Oxford, UK
Press
2018
The Telegraph (print) Friday 19th Oct
The Evening Standard (online and in print) Thurs 18th Oct
Elephant Magazine, "10 Artists to Watch MA & MFA shows 2018"
2017
Hiss online magazine
2016
Slayer Gallery: Garden Party, featured artist and online interview
2015
ARM (A Ruskin Magazine 2015)
The Oculus Journal
The Ox Stu Student Newspaper
2014
Vulture magazine
Awards
2019
Ingram Collection, Prize for Young Contemporary Talent, London, UK
Shortlisted: HIX Art Award 2019, HIX Art Gallery, London, UK
2017
Royal College of Art: School of Fine Arts and Humanities Art Criticism Prize, Shanghai, China
Gilbert Bayes Trust Grant
Shortlisted: Red Mansion Art Prize
Shortlisted: Bluewolf Fine Art Scholarship and Installation
2016
Gibbs Prize in Fine Art, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Shortlisted: Red Mansion Art Prize
Shortlisted: Blank Canvas Art Competition, Clyde and Co
2015
Oxford University Press Pirye Prize
Egerton Coghill Landscape Prize, University of Oxford, UK
The Sir William Dunn School for Pathology Art Award (special commission)
Shortlisted: the Kevin Slingsby Prize for Funnel Vision
Education
2018
MA Sculpture, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2016
BFA (Hons) Fine Art, Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, UK (First Class Honors)
2013
Foundation Diploma in Art Design and Media, Buckinghamshire New University, UK