Plymouth-based visual artist Viv Spencer works across disciplines including printmaking, drawing, and photography. Her passion lies in sustainability, and within her art Viv aims to reuse and recycle materials as much as possible. Her practice is process-led, and she experiments and often combines methods, embracing the happy accident with works that are abundant with colour. All of her output is focused on the creation of one-off prints rather than editions, as well as artist’s books and 3D and small sculptural pieces. Viv comments; “I love everything about printmaking, from the smell of the ink to the shared learning experiences and the collegiate nature of the print studio.”
After completing an Art Foundation, Viv went travelling abroad, but then decided to go down the “safe ‘n sensible” route and trained to become a teacher in Art and Design. One varied teaching career, marriages and 4 boys later, she decided to pick up where she’d left off at 20 and did an MA in printmaking at AUP (passed with distinction, January 2021). Viv is currently in the process of moving studio and will be in a large shared studio at Ocean Studios, Cooperage, Royal William Yard, Plymouth from August 2024.
An avid walker, the things Viv observes feed into her work. She tells us; “I am always drawn to the beauty of weeds, the ephemerality of nature with its constant birth/death cycle and the hidden joys of palimpsests”. Her subject matter is the passing of time and how this can be represented. Viv uses photography to capture fleeting moments that she can then contemplate at her leisure. Artists such as Joan Eardley, Gillian Ayers, Ivon Hitchens, Patrick Heron, and Barbara Rae further inspire her creations.
Recent projects have included a set of collagraphs based on her walks in Central Park, which she has combined with with lino print and stencils. One of these pieces has been accepted into the RE’s forthcoming show Small But Mighty and will be on show at the Bankside Gallery in September. She also made a painted, sewn, and stitched artist’s book, A Walk in the Park, which is currently on display at the Green Hill Gallery Open Exhibition in Moretonhampstead, Devon. Viv recently worked on a collection of printed plaster cubes based on the local landscape which were shown at Falmouth Museum in March this year.
Currently the lead for the Camp PrintKin group in Devon/Cornwall, Viv and her colleagues have just participated in the Printers Paradise exhibition at Hatherleigh. They have recently begun meeting at Ocean Studios and hope to hold an exhibition there next year.
@therealvivspencer
www.viviennespencer.com
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