Deborah Gardner’s practice considers uncertainty and flux between process and outcome, employing body architecture, craft processes, and sculptural assemblage as modes of making to test set categories of art disciplines and their associated material form. Networks, adaptation and connectives are structural devices in this practice, which are inspired by such things as the study of plant structures, energy conductive systems, the growth patterns of physical phenomema and futuristic transformative human imaginings. Gardner is a lecturer and Sustainability Architect at the University of Leeds, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors, and a member of thethe Yorkshire Sculptors Group and LAND2 (Practice led research network). She exhibits nationally and internationally in galleries, museums, cemeteries, sculpture parks and industrial regeneration sites.
Most recent work explores the potential in repurposed materials, such as electrical waste to explore the generative power of repurposing materials to create new meaning. Residencies, projects and exhibitions in the past year include: ‘Plant Power’, GroundWork Gallery, Kings Lynn, ‘In the thick of things’ installation project, APT gallery, London, ‘Threads of Resilience’, Dalgart Artists Residency, Dâlga, Romania,
(a contemporary)Phantasmagoria, Tension Fine Art Gallery, London, ‘Repetition’ Photo Canopy ’24, Burton and South Derbyshire College University Centre. (a contemporary) Phantasmagoria 2, Cornerstone Gallery, Creative Campus,Liverpool Hope University. She is currently collaborating in a pilot research project ‘Re-enchantment: The legacy of folklore in future imaginings’ which explores future imaginings of magic making, witchcraft and ritualism Network for Time ( University of Leeds).