About my work
The world is baffling, and I make objects to try and understand it. My childhood question of how ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ fit together remains, because this relationship between the material world and our interior landscape of thoughts, memories, emotions and ideas is the very stuff of our lives. When I stub my toe, I lose my temper; I smile when I see the apple tree in flower; when I wrap my hands round a warm cup of tea I feel content.
I did not always work in metal, but explored communication and shaping through previous careers in classical singing and healthcare, before a chance encounter with metal led me to making objects in which I could transform those experiences into forms that test where structure gives way to tenderness. Hammering, bending, and soldering as heated copper, brass, silver, steel and nickel glow deep-orange, I file and shape sheet metal by hand, making abstract sculptures based on geometric forms that rest on the table or hang on the wall. In my East London studio, each piece begins with a question that I explore through the processes of making – first with sheets of paper and then with metal, working form, relationship, space and surface until flat sheet starts to hold breath.
The human-scale objects that result seek to hold a quiet space in which we might wonder at the delicate tensions between structure and tenderness that underpin our participation in this precarious, generous world. Their surfaces are pillow-soft, and sometimes colours – from obsidian black and mushroom grey, to forest-green, golden-red and topaz-blue – are drawn from the surface of the metal. These invite touch, play with light and offer a call to enter so that standing close to the enigmatic surfaces of these sculptures, the body might sense the hollow behind the curve, the give of light and the spaces in-between. And I am interested in that pause in which the mind might reconcile steel with softness, because these sculptures are also thresholds: portals into stories other than my own, which offer a place where we might meet both resolution and rest.
About me
Juliette trained at The Cass School of Art gaining BA (Hons, First Class) and a research MA (Distinction). Degrees in English Literature, Social Policy and in Philosophy complement her metalwork.
She has exhibited nationally and internationally including Design Miami, ArtGeneve, Tresor Contemporary, Scottish Gallery (solo exhibition 2019), London Art Fair, British Art Fair and Collect, where she won the prize for Collect Open in 2018. She has work in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Goldsmiths’ Company Collection, and the Irish State collection, as well as numerous private collections, as she has received funding from the Arts Council England Grants for the Arts Programme.
Juliette has extensive speaking experience, both live and on podcasts, including talks at the V&A, Collect, London Art Fair, Tresor, the London Design Festival, and Grant Gibsons’ podcast Material Matters. She has featured in, amongst others, CRAFTS Magazine, the Evening Standard and the FT’s How to Spend It.
She collaborated with Simone ten Hompel as Mixed Metals, a platform for research into making, is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She produced her first publication, Material Perspectives, in 2018, and is represented by Cavaliero Finn.
Selected Awards
Juliette has received numerous awards for her work including Arts Council England Grants for the Arts (2017), Award for Collect Open (2019), several awards from the Goldsmiths’ Craft and Design Council, and was identified as by the Design Council as ‘One to Watch’ in their awards for the future of British Design in 2015.
As well as numerous private collections, her work can be found in the V&A, the Irish State Collection and the collection of the Goldsmiths’ Company.
Press
Juliette has been featured in FT How to Spend It, Telegraph, Evening Standard, Country Living, CRAFTS, Craft and Design Magazine and Interiors Monthly.
Online she has been featured in Wallpaper*, Dezeen, Design Week, Confessions of a Design Geek, Timeout Online and Wall Street International.
