Andrea Gregson

Bio

Andrea Gregson is an artist and curator, based in London. From 1995-97 she received a Postgraduate Fellowship at the Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw, Poland and in 1998, an MA Fine Art, at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has over 30 years’ experience of exhibiting, curating and arts project management in the UK and abroad including site specific exhibitions in the museum sector, responding to collections, social histories, aesthetics of display and contexts of place. Similarly, she has experience as a freelance arts educator, working in the public realm, initiating and realising cross-generational public art projects in art galleries, public buildings and outdoor sites.

In addition to making artwork, Gregson’s curatorial projects include the critically acclaimed exhibition, The Miniature Worlds Show at the Jerwood Space in 2006 and Workshop of Hereafter: Diagrams, Models & Prototypes at Blyth Gallery, Imperial College in 2009.  Additionally she has curated and initiated several external group exhibitions and site-specific projects for students at UCA and other institutions including: Limn, Watts Gallery Artist Village with UCA MA Fine Art (2024), Residence, South Hill Park Arts Centre (2023); Subtext, Jane Austen’s House, Chawton (2022); Echo Control, Division of Labour, Herald Street, London with MA Fine Art alumni (2018).

Her research has generated a significant number of works examining site including Banquet, shortlisted for the prestigious Jerwood Sculpture Prize in 2005, and Last Night For Ever, at the Garden Museum in 2009, exploring the infamous Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens as a site of spatial and historical conflict. In 2012, she created Mindful Things an installation for ‘Concrete’, at Hayward Gallery, a series of sculptural works that articulated the precast concrete structure of the gallery, geology and its location close to the river. 

In 2021-2022 Gregson presented, After (Life of) Objects, a solo show at Danielle Arnaud Gallery showcasing recent and unseen sculpture, a ceramic installation and drawing. Using experimental forms of metal casting and re-appropriating found material fragments, the work considered landscape as a relic of past human production. Visiting sites in London, Cumbria, Lancashire and Scotland, tracing industrial residue in bucolic landscapes, the works on show reflected upon the relics left behind by human activity through casting and drawing. The work built upon research interests around objectified nature, the picturesque, ruins, industrial relics and geological formations. The metal cast works explored the language of reproduction and the overlooked and inside space of sculpture, recasting found objects to a new materiality, waste matter was transformed into miniature metal caves with interiors for reflection. The scale referred to the dimensions of the body, linking psychological states with geological form using innovative methodologies for making in lost wax, the Italian method of bronze casting. The show also presented Objectships, a series of sculptural assemblage combining broken and waste parts gleaned from different places and time reformed as sculpture and, Spectre, a ceramic installation composed of porcelain bracket fungi referencing 18th Century grotesque and the objectification and mass production of nature. Gleaning traces of material history, the works on show mediated objects and their inter-relation within post-industrial, domestic and geological contexts.

In 2019 she presented a solo show, Seeing Through the Ground at Grizedale Forest, Cumbria. There she visited post-industrial landscapes, met historians, archaeologists and forest rangers to examine materially significant geological sites and their traces of former industrialisation. Parallels were made between material transformation through casting and histories of human labour and she invited to Stott Park Bobbin Mill, a former mill established during the Industrial Revolution, to create monumental graphite frottages inside and outside the museum. She has realised public sculpture as spaces for contemplation, ‘Checkpoint Grizedale Forest’ after receiving an Arts Council of England award and an earlier iteration ‘Checkpoint Glisholme Forest’ (2017), sited at the intersection of an ancient woodland in Odense, Denmark. Designed as containers for human observation and reflection, the Checkpoint series contain interior drawings from the forests and surroundings. 

In 2014, she collaborated with esteemed artist Gustav Metzger to create the Facing Extinction – The Conference at UCA Farnham and curated Facing Extinction – The Exhibition at James Hockey Gallery, an ambitious reworking of Metzger’s seminal work, Mass Media: Today and Yesterday. The conference examined how the art and design worlds can inform debates about climate change and extinction. Following this she curated Metzger’s show at the Herbert Read Gallery where UCA students were part of a livestreamed event during the Extinction Marathon: Visions of the Future at the Serpentine Gallery in 2014. In 2015, she was a co-curator for Metzger’s Remember Nature, a worldwide call for participation to the arts on November 4th, with a live event. Currently she is working with Jo Joelson towards re-staging this work to mark the 10-year anniversary of Remember Nature in 2025 with key gallery partners across England.

Solo and group exhibitions include: Mind and Materials at Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, London (2023); After (Life Of) Objects, solo show at Danielle Arnaud, London (2021); Seeing Through The Ground, solo show at Grizedale Gallery, Cumbria (2019); Checkpoint, Gaesteatelier Hollufgard, Fyn, Denmark (2017); Gestures of Resistance, Romantso, Athens, Greece (2017); Restless Terrain, solo show at AVA Gallery, University of East London (2016); Down To Zero (2014) at Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, London; Mindful Things, solo show at Concrete, Hayward Gallery (2012); Polemically Small, Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles, USA (2011); Last Night For Ever, solo show at The Garden Museum, London (2009); The Future Can Wait, Galerie Schuster, Berlin, Germany (2009); Workshop Of Hereafter: Diagrams, Models & Prototypes, Blyth Gallery, Imperial College, London (2009); A World Within, solo show at Phoenix Gallery, Exeter (2008); Solo Show at GALERIE 1816, Bretenoux, France (2007); The Miniature Worlds Show, Jerwood Space, London (2006); Transformacja, Galeria XX1, Warsaw, Poland (2005); Jerwood Sculpture Prize (shortlisted), Jerwood Space, London (2005); Headroom, Blyth Gallery, Imperial College London (2005); Hidden Museum, solo show at Guildhall, Windsor (2003); In Loving Memory, solo show at Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster University (2002); Corpus, Storey Gallery, Lancaster (2001); Sleep, solo show at Centre for Contemporary Art, Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw, Poland and BWA Gallery, Sandomierz (2000);  Devour, solo show at Red Gallery, Hull (2000); Waterscapes, solo show at Oldham Art Gallery (2000); 4 Corners, Static Gallery, Liverpool (2000); In Transit, Chelsea Arts Building, New York (1998); Consume, Galeria Dzialan, Warsaw, Poland (1997); For Sale (1997) and Pioneers (1996) during ‘International Art Symposium’, Borne Sulinowo, Poland; Thought Trees, National Museum and Laboratory for Creative Education, CCA Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw, Poland (1996); Inside Out, Laboratory for Creative Education, CCA Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw (1996); Beyond Words, solo show at Moje Archiwum, Koszalin, Poland (1996); 12 Moments, BWA Gallery, Baltic Arts Centre, Slupsk, Poland (1995); Journey, Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow (1994); Treffen, Gedokhaus, Lubeck, Germany (1993);  Ortswechsel, Castle Wiligrad, Schwerin, Germany (1993). 

• www.andreagregson.co.uk
• @andreagregsonsculpture
• remembernaturegustavmetzger.wordpress.com
• gustavmetzgerucafarnham.wordpress.com