Livia Spinolo
About the artist
Instagram: @liviaspinolo.art @the_space_collective
Website: www.liviaspinolo.com
Livia Spinolo is a Milan born multi-disciplinary artist, and recent graduate of Art Academy London with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art. She holds a Masters in Geological Science from the Università Degli Studi’ in Milan, Italy, and has twelve years experience in an energy company and sixteen years in training and teaching applied arts. Her past experiences in silversmithing are a foundation for her craftsmanship.
Spinolo’s practice ranges from 2D drawing and print to 3D sculpture and site-specific installation, engaging with sensory experience. She creates a different version of reality, exploring visual illusion and challenging the senses of an orderly world.
The aim behind Spinolo’s practice is to shift implied perceptions through defamiliarization of structures and everyday objects. Her work questions the imaginary orders rooted in the collective imagination, exploring the precariousness of systems that do not function because they have lost their meaning - nothing is solid, and all is provisional.
‘‘I engage with structures that stand as metaphors for the imaginary systems we have created. I investigate what form and space communicates beyond the visible. I explore the tension between the representational surface and the real world, the visual illusion generated by the interplay of the two perceptual experiences.’’
Her most recent four-piece 3D sculptural series ‘Heritage,’ are casts of objects that represent mementoes of Spinolo’s cultural background and reflections on an emotional shared past. Through her making process, the objects are transformed, inciting a disquieting strangeness alongside nostalgic memories of home and family.
Spinolo's 2D work interrogates materials’ textures and shapes to explore the oscillation between two and three dimensions. Working in 2D, Spinolo questions the nature of drawing and print being a representation of a 3D object, simultaneously acknowledging their 2D surface realities. The artwork appears as an object suspended in space and one can feel that something has happened or is about to happen. In this work, time is a fourth dimension.
Over the past year, alongside a long-standing internship in metal fabrication at Bradwell Blacksmith, Spinolo has collaborated with artists and arts professionals to further develop her practice. She was selected to work alongside established artists for the pilot project ‘Habitat,’ coordinated by Surrey Hills Arts. Spinolo is currently working on an ambitious public art commission, the Riverside Commission in Farnham, due in March 2023.
