31/07/17
Interview: Laura Youngson Coll
One of five artists participating in the sixth
edition of the Jerwood
Makers Open, Laura Youngson Coll (b1978) trained in fine art and sculpture,
but went on to work at a bookbinders, learning intricate leatherwork techniques
that now define her sculptural installations, which are made primarily from
vellum. Her studio in Crystal Palace, south London, is based within the
bookbinders’ space, down a cobbled side alley, and she still works for them
alongside her own practice, collecting scrap materials, which she transforms
into her astoundingly beautiful works of art. Her Jerwood commission, which
comprises three vitrines, each containing three pieces, responds to the
personal tragedy of losing her partner, Richard, to non-Hodgkin lymphoma in
2015. A mixture of fact and fiction, her depictions of tumours and chemotherapy
drugs, mutated cells and antigens are at once alluring and repellent, beautiful
and abject. Having fought lymphoma myself as a teenager, I was intrigued to
meet with Youngson Coll to find out more about her work and her and Richard’s
story.
Read the interview here