Rocks Remember and Other Stories

Standpoint Gallery

7 November - 7 December

De Cordova’s work plays with ambiguities – there is a tension between notions of surface embellishment being at odds with what lies beneath. By grouping and regrouping objects, her narratives adapt fluidly to different environments.

Within their fabricated forms and painted surfaces, de Cordova’s sculptures hold allusions to many literary genres, from magical realism, landscape writing and classical novels, to ancient myth and folklore tales. She describes the work as the embodiment of real and imagined space, a nexus for lived experience, re-readings, and collected stories.

De Cordova has consistently explored ideas through the prism of female figurative forms that carry reiterated motifs: rocks, rauks, gogottes, stones, sticks – objects that imply women’s burdens, but also innate and transgressive power, where non-human sentience is valued as kinship.

Rocks Remember and Other Stories presents work developed from recent solitary forest walks in British Columbia, Canada, and a summer residency at The British School Of Rome, where de Cordova extended research into Cybele, who had a dual role as goddess of civilisation’s order and nature’s chaos, and who came to earth in the form of a meteorite.

Meteorites are a prominent metaphor, symbols of prophesy, omen and wonder. In Greek mythology, meteorites are associated with weightlessness, or suspension between heaven and earth. De Cordova’s sculptural characters echo this – neither fully grounded in reality, nor entirely abstract – ‘the real unreal’, in her own words. Her work embodies a form of suspension – between primal, instinctual forces and structured aspects of human identity and culture; a seeking of a wildness that exists in the everyday, in the city, the forest, or the mind.

This new exhibition highlights de Cordova’s multi-disciplinary practice as an artist and educator. As a Fellow and part time tutor of more than 30 years at the Royal College of Art, she has been an influential teacher to younger generations of artists. She is currently a subject of the ‘Artists Lives’, an oral history project, part of the National Life Stories at the British Library.

Denise de Cordova (b.1957 Birkenhead, UK) trained at the Laird School of Arts and Crafts, Birkenhead (1975–1976) and Brighton Polytechnic (1977–1980). In 1981 she was selected for the Royal College of Art Travel Scholarship to Carrara, Italy, and in 1983 she gained an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art. She was the Henry Moore Foundation Fellow in 1984–1985 and became a member of Royal Society of Sculptors in 2015.

Solo and two person exhibitions include: Wood Walkers Eagle Gallery, London, 2023; Grounding Jaggedart, London (2022); The Materiality of Mild Fear, Deep Wood Women and Women who have Incidents with Animals Standpoint Gallery, London (2019); Plaything Blyth Gallery, Imperial College, London (2017); Lies and Camouflage Art Projects / Eagle Gallery, London Art Fair (2015); Congregation Jesus College, Cambridge (2013); Salon Particular Middleton Square Church, Islington, London (2011); Doña Stones and Other Stories, Eagle Gallery, London (2011); Contemporary Sculpture Programme, Clifford Chance, Canary Wharf, London (2010-11).
Recent group exhibitions include: VANISHINGS Eagle Gallery at Turps Gallery, London (2024); Trig Point Millimetre, Kingsgate Project Space, London (2024); Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2023); You Will See Marvellous Things Eagle Gallery, London (2022-23); Treewilder Fermywoods, Barnwell Country Park (2022-23); Form and Vessel Eagle Gallery, London (2022); The Confluence of Congregations Argentine Ambassadors Residence, London (curated by Jaggedart) 2021.

Recent residencies include: Sixth Sense Standpoint Gallery, London (2024); Paupers Press invited artist (2024); Bronze residency invited artist – Walnut Works, Suffolk (2024); Drawing the Island Bowen Island, BC, Canada (2023); British School at Rome (2019), Test Drive III Bowen Island, BC, Canada (2022); Ceramic workshop residency, Bowen Island, BC, Canada (2017).

Denise de Cordova is represented by Eagle Gallery / EMH Arts, London.