AirSpace Graduate Residency 2015-16 - Meet the artists - Jenna Naylor

AirSpace Gallery welcomes two new artists onto our Graduate Residency Scheme. Starting in August, Emilie Atkinson and Jenna Naylor will be spending 6 months progressing their works from their degree shows towards solo exhibitions at AirSpace in January 2016.

Jenna Naylor is a fine art practitioner whose practice focuses upon drawing and sculpture. The draughtsmanship within her drawings is heavily influenced by scientific and botanical illustration, and she utilises their traditional conventions to create fictional specimens that are neither plant nor animal. Within her drawings and sculptural works Jenna considers the notion of a precarious nature, often combining both mediums within her work to present the concept of a nature that cannot be classified with any certainty, just as the work she creates can no longer be classified as ‘drawing’ or ‘sculpture’.  

Evolution of a Workspace, 2015

Evolution of a Workspace, 2015, detail

Specimen 4, 2015

"Throughout the six months during the residency Jenna will continue to explore the notion of an ‘Alien Botany’ through the creation of her fictional hybrids, considering their origins, how they may have evolved and how they may be classified within our processes of Taxonomy. She will also examine her clay sculptures under more scrutiny; what are they? What is their purpose? She hopes to investigate and to develop answers to these questions, delving into a part of her practice that continues to be a source of inspiration within her enquiries and to explore a renewed context for her sculptures. " - Jenna Naylor

Jenna keeps an A-N blog - catch up with her works here - https://www.a-n.co.uk/blogs/what-do-artists-do-all-day

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The AirSpace Gallery Graduate Residency Scheme was set up in 2012 to enhance the prospects of Graduate retention and attraction in Stoke-on-Trent. 6 graduates have so far benefitted from its offer of 6 months free studio space within a thriving artist led space, regular professional development and artist support and mentoring both from within the Gallery and external professional artists towards the end-of-residency solo exhibition.