About
Rossella Emanuele is an artist, a lecturer and a researcher. Born in Italy, she lives and works between the UK and Italy. She studied sculpture at Chelsea College of Arts (BA, MA 2001-2005) and is an associate member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors. Currently she is undertaking a practice based PhD at the University for the Creative Arts (2015 -2020).
Sitting at the intersection of idea, material and process, Emanuele’s practice departs from the traditional constraints of sculpture to embrace flexibility, even precariousness expressed in the objects themselves or in the encounter with the space inhabited. Central to the work is the interplay between drawing, sculpture and time-based media. Wrestling between the visual and the experiential, the work is driven by a performative approach to materiality and uses process as a speculative tool to break down the limits of mediums and privilege the immanence of the act of making over the notion of the permanent object. The tenuous balance between chaos and order and a reference to the body underpin much of the work. This has manifested itself as an interest in the pivotal moment when objects disappear or dissolve, thus encouraging the dehiscence of the object, allowing entropy to become the strength of the work.
What interests her has to do with being a subject, living in both a private /personal space as well as in a public/inter-relational one and the negotiation between those two. As a consequence, the subject direct encounter with space, whether actual, inner & virtual and the present moment, become vital elements of her research, which tends to use performative methodologies to activate spaces or environments. Hence her approach to drawing as a spatial & temporal act; citing Michael Newman: as ‘a concretion of time’ in space. Proposing a provisional relationship to the art object that finds completion through a range of engagements, her work has evolved to include collaborative & participatory approaches, where the resulting installations, films, drawing, bookwork and performances are brought into being as a result of the context they are in.
Selected recent projects include:
Enshrine at the Crypt Gallery, St Pancras Parish Church, exhibition curated by Rekha Sameer (UK), Time & Space residency at Atina (Rome), Residency at Rotterdam University Willem de Kooning Academy (NL); A History of Drawing at Camberwell Space curated by Kelly Chorpening January 2018, Where is the Body? The body and Materiality, UCA Research cluster launch event, July 2017; Whitenoise bookwork, funded by UCA, published by Marmalade visual theory distributed by Central Books; book launch at RIBA bookshop, London, June 2017; WhiteNoise bookwork with the BookRoom at Arnolfini for BABE – Bristol Artists’ Book Event; Somatic Shifts: the body and beyond in creative and critical research, symposium and exhibition at Zandra Rhodes Gallery, University for the Creative Arts, Rochester Campus; Drawing Outlines no 2, Live Performance at Fabrica Gallery for Draw to Perform 4, Brighton (UK); Formations, Copeland Gallery, commissioned by Peckham Platform for Peckham Festival, Museum of Invisible Art Yale University Radio (USA), Immateriality: Possibilities and Experiences, exhibition and symposium at Herbert Read Gallery UCA, Canterbury (UK); Drawn/Drawing Conversations exhibition and symposium, organized by the Visual Arts Research Group at the School of Art and Design, Coventry University, WhiteNoise at the Centre for Recent Drawing (C4RD), an Arts Council England and UCA funded collaborative residency and exhibition; Redeeming the Everyday residency and master class at YARAT Contemporary Art, Baku, Azerbaijan, ALL- art:language:location Cambridge; Space Interrupted, Electro Project Space, Hastings, Coastal Currents commission curated by Clare Sheppard; ACTS RE-ACTS 1, Wimbledon Space, London; DRAW 2014, Symposium and exhibitions at Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania, USA.