Henny Burnett, 'Corrugated Tower'

I am a mixed media artist working mainly in sculpture and installation and focusing on the domestic and every day. The dynamics of opposites informs the work: domestic and industrial, beautiful, and ugly, useful and useless, temporary or permanent. My work is increasingly concerned with precariousness and fragility. ‘Mycelium House’ is part of an ongoing body of work ‘A home for my son’, which deals with concepts of belonging and displacement. Simple houses are cast in sustainable and temporary materials such as earth, plant roots and mycelium. The shape of the cast houses echoes Monopoly board pieces, once wood but now plastic, suggesting many ideas inherent to the game about profit, gambling, and winners and loser. My choice of materials reflects the domestic origins of ‘Sponge Tower’ and ‘Corrugated Tower’. The first piece developed from a series of small sculptures made from washing up materials: sponge, stainless steel scourers and washing-up cloths. The second piece from the domestic packaging that mounts up in all our recycling bins. There is a contradiction in having these temporary and lightweight materials cast into bronze. The work still retains its precariousness by balancing on spindly legs.  

Born in London, UK, artist Henny Burnett currently has her studio in Bristol. She attended Byam Shaw School of Art in London, Fiberworks in Berkeley, California, Edinburgh College of Art and University College London. She has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, undertaking residencies in Italy and Britain. She has won awards from Juliet Gomperts Trust, The British council, ACE and travel grants to Canada and USA. She was lead visual artist on ‘Animating the Archives’, Medieval Library, Salisbury Cathedral funded by Heritage lottery, and ‘National Memory - Local Stories’ a creative participation project led by The National Portrait Gallery, London. The b-side Festival commissioned the audio-visual installation ‘Captain’s Cabinet’ that responded to Portland’s history of shipwrecks. She was awarded an AIDF grant to exhibit the collaborative project Cicatrix in Montreal and was commissioned ‘Touch-me-not’ by Procreate Project funded by ACE. Her piece ‘365 Days of Plastic’ was shortlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize. She has recently exhibited as part of the RA Summer exhibition, RWA Open, Wales Contemporary International Open and has just completed a year on the Mass Sculpture program, Thames-Side Studios in London.