Janet Currier’s sculptures, drawings and paintings explore everyday experiences like the joy and messiness of motherhood, the anxiety of sickness and the stress of trying to hold it together in a precarious world. Although her starting point is often autobiographical, Currier’s work examines universal themes of physical vulnerability, care, motherhood, resilience and transformation.
Pattern and repetition are central to her work. Sculptures incorporate small scraps from well washed, much loved pyjamas. Patterned polycotton is used as a surface to paint on or is painstakingly reproduced as a background. Repeated marks, and motifs in her drawings and wallpapers, or the assembled masses of sculptures in her installations, become a stand in for the repetitive nature of domestic labour and caring for others. This reproductive labour is work that seems as if on a constantly overlooked and never-ending loop. It is work that Currier suggests is both monotonous and miraculous in its skill. It is loving endeavour that the world depends upon yet so seldom acknowledges.
The female and maternal body is never far away. Soft sculpture installations suggest flesh that is squashed and compressed. Sometimes the shape of a body, or its parts or an imagined internal view is seen. It is most often a body that is under attack, being probed, or leaking or somehow not quite able to contain itself or the memories held within.
Recent works reference bodily processes at a microscopic level where cells mutate, viruses multiply, and diseases threaten to engulf. They examine the fragility of our existence, and our interdependence on a multiverse of organisms that we don’t yet understand.
Janet Currier 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 shortlisted for the Denton Prize in 2020.
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
2025 Shapeshifting, Clements and Co Gallery London
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
2025 Soft Verge, They come they sit they go, London
2024 Blink Room 6, Safe House 2, Peckham ,London
Extempore 24, Tension Fine Art, London
2023 Holding Space, Hospital Rooms at Hauser and Wirth, London
It’s Coming From Inside, Bell House, Dulwich, London
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,