Julia Thompson: Soft Furnishing

Julia Thompson’s practice moves in and between sculpture, video, installation

and drawing — all stemming from an ever growing collection of saved images and

letters of those no longer in reach yet persistent in presence. Thompson works

from the process of mould making, which is to say, she fills a cavity with clear,

shimmering and soft materials. Casting puffy sculptures that simultaneously

preserve and let go of their contents, ultimately spoiling the trapped images and

letters making up their core.

“A Julia Thompson sculpture is the thing itself. Its primary referent is the site

of its own decaying, transforming physicality. Her works are not just analogues

for the human - specifically female, wounded - body, but are subject to the same

effects imposed by the environment they inhabit, enacting in their own way the

mechanisms of the living organism.”