Rebecca Stevenson / Our Shifting Perspectives Resident



September 30, 2022

I’m excited to announce Rebecca Stevenson as the V&A Shifting Perspectives Resident.

Rebecca is a sculptor based in London who makes work with a variety of media, including wax, resin and bronze. Her work draws on traditional methods (modelling, casting, lost wax casting) and meanings of sculpture, but reimagines these through feminist theories and personal experiences of the body.

Sculptures based on floral and sea motifs
Left – ‘Fierce Dragon’ bronze, 2017. Installation view at Fasanenschloessen Moritzburg. Photo: Carlo Boettger / Right – ‘There is a Spell in Every Sea-Shell’, wax, resin and mixed media, 2021. Photo: Marianne Wie

Her sculptures incorporate figurative elements, but ultimately feel mutable and visceral as they revel in the fluidity of molten metal and wax. Rebecca uses materials that have a strong historic resonance and invoke bodily as well as aesthetic responses – for example, by mimicking sugar or other foodstuffs. Her practice investigates what sculpture has to tell us about our condition as humans, as animals, as bodies, through a complex language of form, materiality and art historical references.

Find more about Rebecca’s work here.

Rebecca’s residency coincides with the Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance exhibition and she aims to develop and present new sculptural works in direct response to Room 64a and the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries, activating the collections and engaging creatively with new and existing audiences.

Room in the V&A, full of sculpture
Medieval & Renaissance, Room 64a, The Robert H. Smith Gallery

Throughout her residency, Rebecca aims to address the themes of material and bodily presence, absence and transformation. She will focus on making-as-research and will start work directly in response to sculptures in the collections. She aims to display works in progress and to present and represent evolving and ongoing work, shifting perspective via a dialogue between her work and the collections.

Rebecca will also develop and lead a series of workshops for our Young People programme on the theme of ‘Personal Reliquary’: exploring the forms, functions and significance of Medieval reliquary and traditional techniques.

Sculpture of a white rabbit surrounded by flowers
‘Rapture’, 2018, wax and polyester resin; photo: Marianne Wie
Sculpted bust of a woman draped in flowers
‘Folie Anglaise’, 2009, wax and polyester resin; photo: Marianne Wie

Her residency will run from 12 October to 14 July, and we will host regular Open Studio sessions where you can drop in and meet Rebecca and discover more about her practice.

Find out more about our Open Studios programme here.

The sculptor with one of her works
Portrait by Nick Manser
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Comments

Thanks for sharing this news – Rebecca’s work looks wonderful and fascinating; I’ll definitely visit her Open Studio and look forward to the new works

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