Naomi Escott

My work explores the concept of metaphorical bodies, and the lines and traces of connection. As one of the most basic of human needs, it travels like a thread throughout our lives, being severed, repaired, spun, and sought. My practice is a considered response to this paradox as I look to how these lines are bound in us in the ideas of the tangible and intangible. As an inter-disciplinary artist, with an interest in narrative, story, lived-experience and connection, I create work that is diverse and expansive, across differing mediums. I also look to the semiotics of language and objects in terms of how women define and understand themselves, especially through modern-day talismans and folklore. I am interested in the story we weave about ourselves that stems from the social narrative we’re given, and how objects and everyday items either reinforce or fracture this.

Drawing on the work of Tim Ingold, and in particular, “Lines; A Brief History”, as well as Jane Bennett and her “Thing Power” theory of non-human matter, I seek to apply a theoretical understanding and rigour to my material investigations.

Taking inspiration from Ursula LeGuin, and her “Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” I look to the stories we all hold within, that shape our perception of our individual place in the world.

Part of my process is allowing materials to reveal themselves; working with intention, working with materials, but not overtly controlling the outcome. Working with bronze, plaster, porcelain, paper, wax, copper and sound, my outcomes are a continuing expression of the question of connection through non-human matter, and the symbiosis between human and non-human matter. I

“Spoil/Heap” (2024) is an  investigation of the labour associated with the domestic and private sphere. I am currently looking to the act of laundry as representation of the complex relationships women can have with culturally assigned but personally unnegotiated tasks. Examining laundry as a form of constant companion and continual captor as well as distilling the invisible labour of caregiving and the complex endurance of mothering.

These current investigations are a steppingstone in an extended conversation about both the visible and invisible aspects of relationships that includes humans, objects, and non-human matter,  materiality and becoming. It has unfurled from the theories I am interested in and interwoven through my practice.

My outcomes are an opening for further exploration, and the origination of a much deeper personal enquiry.

Drawing on the echoes of memory, I look to the presence of absence and displacement in our daily lives and the way in which we attempt to circumnavigate this human truth.