Victoria Lucas’s artwork “deals with how nature is constructed, and how the concept of nature in turn constructs our political and social imaginary, with a particular focus on how gender is produced, reinforced and can be undermined through the self-representation of women within the landscape” (Velvick, 2023). Her recent practice is predominantly contextualised by the landscapes of Northern England. In the craggy rock of post industry and at the conceptual edges of human-centred culture, the skins of ontological categorisation are permeated through a subversive process of material reckoning. Technology becomes a co-conspirator; nature a mentor. Through a process of lingering with nature on sites of human-led disturbance, Victoria visualizes new aggregates that de-centre the human subject as part of a post-humanist entanglement of matter.
Victoria Lucas has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally for the past twenty years. Recent shows include PostNatures, Graves Gallery, Sheffield (curated project) (2023), Aggregate, Freelands Foundation, London (2022), The Strata of Things at Threshold Sculpture, Leeds (solo exhibition) (2021), Heavy Water at Site Gallery, Sheffield (2021), Where Rock and Hard Place Meet (solo exhibition) at Haarlem Artspace, Wirksworth (2018) and The Search at The Hepworth, Wakefield (2021).
Recent commissions include Tessellate, a body of site-responsive work for Iodeposito, Udine, Italy (2022), Strange and Glorious Becomings, a collage commission for the cover of CHAIN/MAIL #4, published by Corridor 8 (2021); and Conflict, a video artwork for the National Portrait Gallery, London (2014). She has recently undertaken artist residency programmes with OSSO, Portugal (2020), IoDeposito, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Italy (2022), Freelands Artist Programme, Sheffield and London (2019-2021), Haarlem Artspace, Wirksworth (2018) and Nayland Rock Hotel, Margate (2018).
She won the SOLO award™ in 2016 and has artworks in both public and private collections, including Tate Britain, Leeds Arts University and the Media Math Collective. Her work appears in various publications and journals, critiqued by writers such as Stephanie Hartle (Academic and Curator, SHU), Meghan Goodeve (Curator, Freelands Foundation), Angelica Sule (Director, Film and Video Umbrella), Colin Perry (Art Monthly) and Lauren Velvick (Director, Corridor 8).
Lucas is a 0.5 Senior Lecturer / Researcher in Fine Art at the University of Central Lancashire and a part-time PhD Candidate in the Art, Design and Media Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University. She has recently presented her artistic research at the Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference, London (2023), An Elastic Continuum Symposium, S1 Artspace, Sheffield (2023), the Art and the Rural Imagination Conference, convened online (2020), and the Overwhelming Imaginations Conference, SiShang Art Museum, Beijing (2016).
Featured Artworks:
Channeling (To Dwell Underneath the Ground), 2024. Video, 06:25” /// Coalesce, Oval Video Projection, 2021, 10:00 ///Aggregated Form, 2020. Large scale photograph on fabric, plaster cast /// Entanglement, Artist Video, 2021, 09:00 /// Coalesce, Oval Video Projection, 2021, 10:00 /// GreenScreen I & II, 2018. Collage /// The Strata of Things (I, II, III), 2021. Photographic print on hand-cut vinyl, steel, painted wooden plinth, 190 x 120 x 35cm /// Formations I - VII, Limited Edition Photographic Series (1/30), 2020, 420 x 594mm ///where rock and hard place meet, 2018. Digital photograph printed on fabric, looped video with audio, quarried rock. 6m x 2m /// Conversing With Tiresias, 2018. Single Channel Video with Plant, 05:56 /// Lay of the Land (and other such myths), 2016-17. Multi-Media Installation
Exhibition Documentation: Jules Lister