Jo Lathwood
Jo Lathwood makes sculptures and large scale installations which regularly respond to a particular site, event, material or process. Working with recycled timber she has built a meandering staircase that travelled across 3 stories to facilitate the audience to touch the roof of a church. Experimenting with foundry technologies she has developed a way of making homemade lava sculptures and though researching traditional techniques she has made inks from Oak Galls.
Recurring themes are transitions, journeys, viewpoints, and illusions. Her practice is driven by a need to describe an emotional state through a physical space or object and engage viewers through an associated narrative. She is currently exploring impermanent works following as desire to no longer own or keep her artwork.
Her portfolio varies greatly in form, scale, context and method of production, encompassing: temporary and permanent public art, exhibitions curated for galleries and heritage sites and studio-based work.
Over the course of Lathwood’s practice, ladders have been important symbol of change, desire and aspiration. They are the quintessential tools to get over something, to conquer obstacles and shift a view point.
During the Covid-19 lockdown she started a new series of gouache paintings of very small ladders on paper. This extended to experiments with recycled paper stocks to make neat collages. The ladders were either drawn from imagination, observation or sent in by individuals also enthused by ladders.
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Past activities include:
Grow Feral, Urban Garden, Culture Weston Commission, WSM, UK (2022), ‘Volcanoes and Scoria Bricks’ Live lava performance for Middlesborough art weekend, UK (2021), Home from Home, Public Pavilion commission, Yate, UK (2020), Cipher, Gingko Commission in St Pauls, Bristol, UK (2020), Material as Labour, Labour as value, essay for Yellowfields, Publication (2020); Graft Ladder, part of Open-Up at Hestercombe Gallery and gardens, Taunton (2020); Well Trodden Wrong Ways, dual exhibition with Paul Blakemore at Thelma Hulbert Gallery, East Devon, (2019); LTU-19 (with Eleanor Duffin), part of Women on the Moon group exhibition, KKKC, Klaipeda, Lithuania. (2019); Getting There, solo exhibition at Fabrica, Brighton UK (2018); Curious Formations, TNA commission at Biddulph Grange, Stoke on Trent, UK (2017); Is it magma?, solo exhibition at Earth Gallery, University of Bristol, UK (2016); A Solid Above, dual exhibition with Solveig Settemsdal at Hardwick Gallery, University of Gloucester, UK (2016); Resident artist at Hestercombe Gallery and Gardens, Somerset, UK (2015); Art, Cities & Landscapes, commission in Amiens, France (2013). Lathwood’s studio is based at Spike Island Artspace, Bristol.