About

I am an Italian-British interdisciplinary artist based in Devon, UK. I collect and reconfigure the fragments, detritus and recovered materials that pass through my hands into assemblages that conjure personas and worlds, as a form of storytelling and (auto)biography.  

I create material and immaterial narrative installations using ingredients such as household items, personal possessions, drawing, sound, moving image, the spoken and written word, recycling, memories, and data to explore the nostalgia and freightedness of objects and recollections.

A by-product of my activity is a growing horror at the tide of synthetic material and memories that clutter our lives.

My drawing practice is in part a mission to use up all my drawing implements before I buy any new. It consists of lines, geometries and colour/material clashes to effect redactions of well-known documents such as IKEA assembly instructions and book texts.

I work in series as a means to create physical scale, and as a source of incantation. Ongoing projects include: Flowers for Mr O’Brien (2023 and ongoing), a series of flowers made from my recycling and synthetic petals littering my local cemetery; 900 Self Portraits Nr. XXX, (2019 and ongoing), a series of paper assemblages, currently numbering over 1000.

I am a second career artist and my first career as an Experience Designer has informed the themes in my work from the margins. I hold an MSc in Human-Computer Interaction (UCL, Distinction), a Graduate Diploma in Fine Art (Chelsea College of Art, UAL, Distinction) and have completed the Turps MASS correspondence course (2023).

Collaboration

My collaborative practice with artist Mike Abrahams uses audience-generated data to reveal the symbiotic relationship between individuals and the communities they belong to. Our work is participatory, responds to current events, and is always supported by a sponsoring institution.

For First Words in Dalston (2020-23) we collated the first sentence of books contributed, as texts and voice recordings, by locals of Dalston CLR James Library in Dalston, East London, during the 2020/1 pandemic lockdowns. The sentences were painted onto hoardings in the Dalston Square and the recordings were played in a sound installation using the hoardings as speakers. It was a way of connecting the library with the public and the public with its library at a time when connections were both impossible and much needed.

In Worst of Times, Best of Times? (installed May 2022) we worked with Kensington Central Library, West London, to elicit people’s changing reading habits during and after the 2020/1 lockdowns. These contributions were made into a visual artwork displayed in Kensington Central Library, with accompanying digital artworks in the Borough’s six libraries.

For the 2022 Riverside Artists Group annual exhibition, Many Rivers to Cross, Mike and I created Here to There to Here (2022). We collaborated with CityLit College in London, asking their students four questions about home and ancestry. This project was extended to Hastings in 2023, polling the local community about belonging and dreaming.

Our work can be see at Abrahams Giuliano.

Groups

I am a member of several artists’ groups: nomer, Fold, Riverside Artists Group , Exeter Artists’ Collective and CAMP.

Collector

As a collector, I am primarily focussed on contemporary women artists. I like to build a rapport through a genuine interest in their practices and ways of thinking. I number Fleur Deakin, Lindsay Mapes and Alicia Velazquez in my collection.

CV

Download my CV here:

Contact

If you would like to know more about my work or arrange a studio visit, please message me on Instagram @francesca.giuliano.here.