Deborah Gardner’s practice considers uncertainty and flux between process and outcome, employing craft traditions, body architecture and sculptural assemblage as modes of making to perplex set categories of art disciplines and their 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 at the University of Leeds and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors, the Yorkshire Sculptors Group and LAND2 (Practice led research network). She has exhibited 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. Resdiencies, projects and exhibitions planned within the next year include: ‘Phantasmagoria’, Tension Fine Art Gallery, London, ‘Threads of Resilience’, Dalgart Artists Residency, Dâlga, Romania, Materials and Substance experimental installation project, APT gallery, London, ‘Plant Power’, Groundwork Gallery, Kings Lynn.