Things going wrong
Janet Currier’s work explores an internal world where memories and feelings bubble up to the surface. The sculptures, installations and paintings she makes are a way of processing everyday experiences like the feelings of joy and messiness of being a mother, the anxiety of sickness and the stress trying to hold it all together in an increasingly precarious world.
Pattern and repetition are central to the work. Repeated marks and motifs in her drawings, or the masses of soft pink forms in her installations, are a metaphor for the labour of caring. It is work that seems to be on a never ending but constantly overlooked loop. It is monotonous but somehow miraculous in its skill.
The female and maternal body is never far away. Soft sculpture installations suggest raw flesh that is uncomfortably squashed and compressed. Sometimes the shape of a body, or an imagined internal view is seen in the work. It is most often a body that is under attack, a body being probed or sick or leaking and somehow not quite able to contain itself.
Janet Currier ( b. Canada 1963) lives and works in London. She received her MFA from Goldsmiths in 2017, winning the Warden’s Art Prize that year. Currier’s work is held in various private and public collections including Goldsmiths College Collection. She was awarded the first Elephant Residency at Griffin Studios in 2017. She was recently shortlisted for the Denton Prize.
Biography
b. Canada, 1963
Lives and works in London
Education
2017 M.F.A Fine Art University of London – Goldsmiths College
1995 M.A. Applied Anthropology and Youth and Community Work - Goldsmiths College
1986 B.A. Hons Fine Art 2.1, University of Leeds
Solo and two person Exhibitions
2018 Waiting Room, Deptford x Fringe, Waldron Health Centre, London SE8
2014 Let me go to the window, Harts Lane Studios, New Cross, London
2011 Small things, big thoughts, Deptford X, London
Group Exhibitions
2023 Fetish, Greatorex Studios, London
2022 Before the moon I am, Hoxton Arches, London
2020 Hell or Highwater, Lightvessel21, Gravesend, Kent
Fuzzy Objects, San Mei Gallery, Brixton, London
2019 Afterhours, San Mei Gallery, Brixton, London
Entitled, The Spike, Bristol
2018 Substrate, No Format Gallery, Deptford London
2017 Goldsmiths MFA Degree Show, Goldsmiths College
Mothership 2, Bruton Arts Factory, Bruton Somerset
2016 Mothership, The Sawmills, Wandsworth, London
2014 Safespace, The Shipwright's Palace, Deptford, London
2013 Otherworldly, Harts Lane Studios, New Cross, London
Light Houses, Telegraph Hill Film Festival, New Cross, London
2011 100 pictures 100 words, The Hill Station, Telegraph Hill, London
2007 Recent Fruit, Paul Mcpherson Gallery, Greenwich, London
2006 Six, Paul Mcpherson Gallery, Greenwich, London
Awards and Residencies
2021 Shortlisted for the Denton Art Prize 10, London
2017-18 Elephant Residency - with Elephant Magazine hosted by Griffin Studios at Colart, West London
2017 Wardens Purchase Prize, Goldsmiths College, London
Selected Creative engagement projects
2018-21 Vincent’s Treasures and other creative education projects with local schools and youth groups at Van Gogh House and San Mei Gallery in London
2010-11 Airborne Families - creative evaluation workshops for Scarabeus Aerial Theatre Company
2006 Changing Spaces - Discover/Creative Partnerships/ Maryland Primary School, London
2010 Tate Modern / Southwark Adult and Family Learning Service - Artist Educator
2010 Be in the Know – Young Leaders Magazine Bermondsey Street, London SE1
2009 Change Schools Programme, Chingford Community School/ A New Direction/Creative Partnerships
2007-9 Resident artist/ Family Learning workshop leader Rotherhithe Primary School, Southwark/ Café Gallery Southwark Park
2008 Green Team Mural Project, St Andrew’s School Islington, London
Publications:
Roseo, Maria Rosaria Roseo: Janet Currier: interview, Artemorbida July 2022
Hell or High Water Film, courtesy of Spaghetti Weston Films
Walsh, Roxy: Amitie, in Fuzzy Objects: Amitie, June 2020
Why are we still in the cracks? Pp10-14, Still We Rise: Art Within the Cracks: Vol 1, December 2019
Janet Currier: Motherhood and Microbiology, pp 88-89,Elephant Magazine, Issue 35, summer 2018
In conversation with Mothership, December 2016 in Curating the Contemporary,