Abigail Booth

Working across a multi-disciplinary language of textiles, painting, photography, sculpture and print, Abigail Booth’s practice explores the emotional capacity of material objects to embody intergenerational memory across time and space. Reflecting on the intrinsic relationship of her materials both to the human body and the psychological condition, her works made from textiles, earth, bone, hair, plant dyes and charcoal are multi-layered, tactile manifestations of our shifting understanding of place and identity. The physical origin of found objects and pigments, cultivated and unearthed from the environments she encounters, become both a tangible and imagined space worked directly into the surface of her works through the painstaking processes of hand stitching, painting, dyeing and the printed image. Central to her work is an exploration of how our domestic lives, family histories and intimate connection to material objects and the natural world permeate our subconscious throughout our lifetimes. Unravelling ideas around anxiety, loss and preservation, she draws on the transfer of intergenerational memory and our sense of belonging within a continually evolving material culture. An intimate reflection on the complexities of our everyday lives, her work draws us into the dreamt and tactile realms of imagination and memory, asking us to confront our past and future relationships with the natural world and each other.

Abigail Booth (born 1991, London) trained at Chelsea College of Art (2010/13), San Francisco Art Institute (2012) and Byam Shaw School of Art (2010). In 2014 she established Forest + Found, an art collective with whom she works on public commissions, exhibitions and curatorial projects. She has exhibited her work independently at: Fred Levine (Bruton, London & Oxfordshire 2022/25) Make Hauser & Wirth (Somerset 2018/2025), Amelie Du Chalard (Paris 2022/25), Ruthin Craft Centre (Wales 2018/2024), Radnōr (New York 2023/25), New Art Centre (Roche Court 2020), Manchester Art Gallery (Manchester, 2020); Awards include: Arts Council England DYCP Grant (2023/24), Jerwood Makers Open (2019), QEST Scholarship (2019), Collect Open (Crafts Council 2018); Residencies: Make Hauser & Wirth (Braemar, Scotland 2023), Need Make Use (Pitt Rivers Museum 2017). Artist Talks: Hauser & Wirth Somerset (2021/23) Crafts Council, UK (2021) Jerwood Arts, London (2019) V&A Museum, London (2016); Teaching: Ruthin Craft Centre, Wales (2023) West Dean College, Sussex (2021/23) Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Yorkshire (2017/18) Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (2017) Milton Keynes Art Centre, Milton Keynes (2017).