Deborah Gardner

My practice considers uncertainty and flux between process and outcome, employing body architecture, craft processes, and sculptural assemblage as modes of making. Networks, adaptation and connectives are structural devices in this practice, inspired by such things as the study of plant life, energy conductive systems, the growth patterns of physical phenomena and futuristic imaginings of biospheres and human and non-human entanglement.

As a reflection on our current anxieties toward our climate emergency, exhibitions, such as New Doggerland (2020), Invasive Species (2001), Phantasmagoria (2024), and Plant Power (2025), explore ideas of Gothic Botanic horror and more recent Science fiction or Climate fiction, whereby predatory, invasive plant species consume or endanger human life, or an imagining of hypotheses for future human biospheres, such as the theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson’s speculative proposal for the planting of genetically engineered trees capable on comets.  Alternatively, Retrofuturism, humour and nostalgia also play their part in these visual imaginings, allowing possibilities for reflection on hopeful utopias evoking feelings of wonder and escapism.

A recent  Horizons Network for Time interdisciplinary research project titled Re-enchantment: The legacy of folklore in future imaginings (University of Leeds) examined the legacy of folklore, mythologies and ritualism on our ecological thinking today alongside artistic speculation on imagined future attitudes to connecting and communing with the natural environment.  The research explored the limits of our rational worldview and questioned the extent to which magical thinking offers new visions of what it means to be human in the natural world. Apotropaic magic is particularly of interest, especially ideas of door or house protection inviting a consideration of the imaginative co-dependence of the home and the natural or supernatural world outside

In a recent artists’ residency exhibition, titled ‘Threads of Resilience’ (2024), in rural Romania, villagers donated materials for artistic response.  Considering ideas of reclaiming and repurposing alongside Romanian folklore, my ‘masquerade’ assemblages, referred to mythologies surrounding ideas of death and renewal. My body wearable sculptures continue to explore ideas of hybridity and mutualism with non-human species, influenced by revivalisms of ancient lores and a re-imagining of mythological reconnections with the natural environment.

Contact Information

website: https://deborahgardner.co.uk
instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_deborah.gardner
e-mail: [email protected]

Education

• 1989
  • Master of Fine Arts Degree, Newcastle University

Solo Exhibitions

• 2018
  • Collections and Contingency -Leeds Discovery Centre, Leeds.  (Leeds University Innovation Fund, Cultural Institute).
• 2017
  • Interweave - Bradford Industrial Museum, Bradford. Arts Council funded commission for the Yorkshire Year of the Textile (May-November 2017); Musculoskeletal Biomedical Research Centre, Chapel Allerton Hospital, Leeds (December 2017– March 2018)
• 2011
  • Re-Collect: Sculptural Responses to ideas of Place within Collections, collaboration with Huddersfield Art Gallery and the Arts Council Collection, Huddersfield Art Gallery
• 2007
  • In Memoriam, Camelia House, Bretton Hall, Yorkshire Sculpture Park
• 2004
  • Networks, Albury Regional Art Gallery, Albury, NSW, Australia
• 2003
  • Embodiment, 20-21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire

Two person exhibitions

• 2023
  • Inbetweens  Ex Libris Gallery, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
• 2020 
  • Art of Science, Science of Art, Otley Science Fair ( online, project funded by Biological Imaging Network, Kings College, London)
• 2019
  • Texturen des Ortes, Inselgalerie, Berlin
  • Art and Science: Another way of looking, School of Design, University of Leeds
  • When Two Worlds Collide: Visualising Cellularity, Otley Science Fair (funded by the Biomedical Society).

Three person exhibitions

• 2024 
  • Threads of Resilience. Dalgart artists’ residency, Craiova, Romania

Group exhibitions

• 2025
  ◦ Royal Society of Sculptors Summer Exhibition, Burgh House, Hampstead, London
  ◦ Plant Power, Groundwork Gallery, Kings Lynn
  ◦ (a contemporary) Phantasmagoria II, Cornerstone Gallery, Liverpool Hope University

• 2024
  ◦ In the Thick of Things, APT Gallery, part of the biennial APT SHOTS programme, London
  ◦ (a contemporary) Phantasmagoria I, Tension Fine Art Gallery, London

• 2023
  ◦ Borrow Pit, Huddersfield Art Gallery (Yorkshire Sculpture Group)
  ◦ Its Coming From Inside, Bellhouse, Dulwich, London
  ◦ What is This Thing called Materials Research?, Bragg Centre for Materials Research, University of Leeds

• 2022
  ◦ Raw Edge, Sunny Bank Mills Gallery, Farsley, Leeds
  ◦ Assembly, Wakefield Cathedral

• 2021
  ◦ Passages, Old Parcel Office, Scarborough
  ◦ Invasive Species, Cannon Hall and Park, South Yorkshire

• 2020
  ◦ New Doggerland II, Thameside Gallery, Woolwich, London

• 2019
  ◦ New Doggerland I, Lumen Gallery, Bethnal Green, London

• 2017
  ◦ In the Open, Sheffield Institute of Arts Gallery, Sheffield, organised through the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment and Land2

• 2016
  ◦ Order and Incident, Dom Literatury w Łodzi, Lodz, Poland

• 2015
  ◦ Terrace Treasures, Rievaulx Abbey, North Yorkshire

• 2014–15
  ◦ Monument, Musee des Beaux Arts, Calais, EU funded collaboration with SVAC, Norwich and Fabrica, Brighton

• 2014
  ◦ No Place Like Home, Huyton Gallery, Knowsley, Liverpool
  ◦ Saltaire Arts Festival, Bradford

• 2013
  ◦ Landscape, Art & Uncertainty, Southampton City Art Gallery

• 2012
  ◦ Close to Home, East Street Arts, Leeds
  ◦ The Curious Art Trail, West Norwood Cemetery, London

• 2011
  ◦ European Identity, San Arenas, Spain (August); Peglio, Urbania, Italy (October)

• 2010
  ◦ European Identity, Inselgalerie, Berlin (October); Central Museum of Textiles, Lodz, Poland (December)
  ◦ European Sculpture: Diversity and Difference, curated through Sculpture Network, Nave Gallery, Turin, Italy
  ◦ Rites and Rituals, St Augustine’s Church, Forest Hill, London
  ◦ All Over the Place, Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, Leeds

• 2008
  ◦ All Over the Place, LAND2 touring exhibition, UWE, Bristol
  ◦ EdgeCentrics, Williamson Tunnel Heritage Centre, Liverpool, Liverpool Independents Biennial 08

• 2007
  ◦ Sculpting the Suburban, Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, London

• 2006
  ◦ Tactual Explorations, North Light Gallery, Huddersfield

• 2005
  ◦ Zoo-A-Logical, Knapp Gallery, Regent’s Park, London
  ◦ Grounds for Design, Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, London
  ◦ Open Desk, Ragged School Museum, Mile End, London

• 2004
  ◦ Outdoor Habitats, MoDA, Middlesex University, London
  ◦ Haunt, Sherborne House, Dorset (part of year-long Timeline project)

• 2003
  ◦ Summer Exhibition, Burghley House Sculpture Park, Stamford

To come at the end after group exhibitions

Deborah Gardner is a Lecturer in Art and Design at the University of Leeds, a fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors and a member of the Yorkshire Sculpture Group.  Her most recent research project Re-enchantment: The legacy of folklore in future imaginings (2025) was funded by the Horizons programme, Network for Time research group, University of Leeds and her most recent site intervention artwork completed during the Trelex artists residency programme, Switzerland (2025) explored and responded to a small woodland area.