Q & A with Pippa Ryan
Location: East London
Discipline: Mixed Media Assemblage Art
Creative Practice/Process:
My fascinating three-dimensional artworks celebrate the hidden stories, memories and beauty of everyday vintage objects and
discarded keepsakes. Each of these unique items has its own cultural significance, practical use and intriguing history.
As you explore my art, you’ll discover that it resonates with
forgotten memories and evokes a sense of nostalgia that transcends time. One of my clients, Zoe, describes my artwork as “a wonderful time capsule of days gone by, full of memories for me, like rifling through my grandmother’s button box”.
For MADE London 2023, I will be presenting my new collection, A Slice in Time, an exploration of life’s seasons, the light and dark passages of time we all experience and the objects we collect along the way.
Short bio:
Before opening my studio in 2019, I worked for 15 years as a graphic designer. I obtained a first class degree in Graphic Design and have won many awards for my editorial design.
My work is collected by an international audience and I have worked on many commissions, including sentimental boxes for private clients as well as corporate pieces working with company’s archives. My art has also been featured in Country Living magazine.
Your influences and motivations:
Since I was very little, I’ve always had a fascination with hidden keepsakes. Treasures are unearthed from the back of bureaus, tucked into cabinets and hidden in drawers. I have vivid memories of my Mum having a little Chinese cabinet that she filled with
snippets of Victorian lace, bobbins, buttons and trinkets. With these, I created stories – where had they come from? Was the lace from the hem of a feisty suffragette or the button from a soldier’s coat, given as a keepsake to his sweetheart?
This curiosity has never left me and whether I am working on a
bespoke Memory Box showcasing a client’s own keepsakes or a new collection of curated objects, celebrating these items, their history, use, design and the stories and memories they evoke is what inspires me. I believe that every object has a tale to tell, even after it has served its original purpose. That’s why I have curated curious collections of vintage objects, giving them a new lease of life in my bold, quirky, contemporary artworks, which serve as mini museums that tell captivating stories.
Can you tell us a little more about the collection you are launching at MADE?
My new collection, A Slice in Time, is an exploration of life’s
seasons, the light and dark passages of time we all experience and the objects we collect along the way.
Each piece in the collection has its own nuance within this, for
example the Triptych is more playful, focusing on the small curios of life: the monopoly pieces that siblings used to fight over; the retro cocktail sticks that Mum always insisted on using when guests were around and treasures Grandma used to keep in her sewing box. Composition 4, on the other hand, was inspired by how we can drift apart over time, becoming new and more complicated shapes and versions of ourselves and, as such, has a more mechanical, measured feel.
These artworks are also a very literal ‘slice in time’ preserving a snapshot of our cultural history and design over the past 100 years. There are items to captivate and intrigue every time you look and are all real statement pieces that will enhance any art collection.
