From highly sculptural ceramics, to industrial sculpture and experimental painting, the work of artist Rebecca Appleby is a continual exploration of the contemporary urban landscape. Examining the ever-present cohabitation and conflict between industry and nature.
Through a series of techniques developed over a 20-year career, Rebecca’s works are strongly defined by a series of marks and surface contusions that mimic both the manufactured process of industry and the seemingly sporadic, yet calculated occurrences found in nature.
Appleby’s new collection BLOCK, is layered with meaning, both literal and conceptual. Each ceramic fragment stands as an individual, yet together, they form a greater whole—an assemblage of pieces that interlock, much like a city, a people, or a history fractured and reconfigured.
Inspired by the simple, innocent forms of children’s building blocks, these sculptures speak to the way we construct and deconstruct our understanding of the world. Artists bear witness, they absorb, question, and attempt to translate what they see and hear into something tangible—something that might help them comprehend the incomprehensible.
The grid-like division of the Gaza Strip, fragmented into blocks as if part of a sinister game of strategy, has imprinted itself onto Appleby’s consciousness. It mirrors the images that flood our screens: the devastation, the displacement, the remnants of a city in ruin. These sculptures are a response to that—an attempt to make sense of what defies reason.
The word block itself carries weight. A block is a foundation, a building material. It is a unit, but also an obstacle—a barrier, a barricade, a restriction. In this work, all these meanings converge. BLOCK is about what is built and what is broken, what is separated and what, despite it all, still holds together.
Born in Leeds, Appleby is a highly respected artist, whose sculptural and painterly eye, allows her the diversity to go beyond the boundaries of her traditional background in ceramics, giving her the freedom to create vibrant and challenging work. She trained at Edinburgh College of Art 1999-2001 (BA Ceramics) and currently lives and works in Yorkshire.