Emma Sheehy, Love Bench, 2024

Emma Sheehy (b. 1992, London, England) creates imaginative spaces that are escapist, funny and folkloric. They are filled with a somewhat weaponised naïveté. Often drawing upon medieval- inspired imagery, she builds up a collection of creatures to play with again and again in paintings and sculptures. Emma’s work is influenced by pre-modern polytheistic mythologies, medieval manuscripts and awkward public interactions. Emma uses her research as a means of understanding the present. Her impish creatures complicitly smile at our contemporary
moment and the repeating patterns we find ourselves in. They seek to communicate that to love is a freedom from pain. For Emma, making work is sometimes a personal healing process which looks to accept the monstrous, shadow sides of the self. It is also a means of learning to cherish and love her body which is outside of the purported conventional, ‘able’ working body, as a result of chronic disease. Although there are constant battles, the times where love wins are moments of glorious flowing.

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Emma Sheehy