Miss Lilah Fowler
- Associate Professor, Sculpture
Featured Media
Slade School of Fine Art
University College London
Gower Street
London
WC1E 6BT
Biography
Lilah Fowler is British-Japanese artist based in London. Moving between digital, analogue and organic methods, from hand-weaving and ceramics to algal growths and bespoke image-generating software, Fowler’s artwork draws on issues of landscape and infrastructure to create a deeper understanding of the geopolitics of our hyper-landscape. In sculptural-led installations that incorporate textile, clay, found object, film and sound, often influenced by collaborations or conversations with researchers from other disciplines, her work explores the potential for abstraction inherent in any medium, and the possibilities of translation between materials along the spectrum from plastic to pixel.
Research Interests
Research collaboration takes a prominent role in her investigations and the output is very often influenced by collaborations or conversations with researchers from other disciplines and is derived by experimental and research-led investigations. Recent works have involved collaborations with mycologists, plant scientists biochemists, quantum physicists, computer programmers, mathematicians and weavers. Current research reflects on hybridized identity via Japanese arts and crafts, such as ceramics and textile dyes, the origin and nomenclature of plants; cultural rituals, festivals; Japan’s history and own colonial legacies.
Solo Exhibitions of her work include: ‘Code Clay, Data Dirt’ at Firstsite, Colchester; ‘nth nature’ at Galerie Gisela Clement, Bonn and Assembly Point, London. Group Exhibitions include: ‘Desde el Salón’, Whitechapel Gallery, London, ‘My Kid could’ve Done That,’ The Holburne Museum, Bath, ‘Bauhaus’ at Frauenmuseum Bonn; ‘Sie Machen Was Sie Wollen’ at Varna City Gallery, Bulgaria, curated by Melange, Cologne; and ‘PURE LIGHT’ at Vasarely Museum, Budapest, VITRINE, Basel, Switzerland.
Fowler has worked on several large scale permanent public artworks including: 'Migrations', Cambridge (2024), ‘Commonplace’, Bedford Avenue, London (2017), ‘14537/9431’, Nelson Street, Bristol (2017) and ‘Lantern’ Whipps Cross Hospital, London (2020). (b. London, UK). She is represented by Galerie Gisela Clement, Germany and Un-Spaced, France.
Teaching Summary
I joined the Slade in 2010 and have taught in Fine Art Sculpture across Undergraduate, MA and PhD level. I am currently an Associate Professor teaching in Undergraduate Sculpture; and I have been a Fellow of The Higher Education Academy since 2014.
Since 2023 I have been external examiner for BA(Hons) Fine Art Extension Degree at Goldsmiths, University of London.
My experience as a visiting lecturer includes:
Wimbledon School of Art, University of the Arts London
University for the Creative Arts, Farnham.
Department of Mathematics, UCL.
Hong Kong Baptist University, Academy of Visual Art, China.
Byam Shaw School of Art, Central Saint Martins
Exhibitions
My Kid could’ve Done That 2021 - The Holburne Museum, Bath
Curated by Astrid and William Cooper.
202. A show focusing on artists creating new works with their children.
Desde el Salón (From the Living Room) 2021 - Whitechapel Gallery, London UK
Desde el Salón (From the Living Room): Sol Calero selects from the Hiscox Collection
19 May – 15 August 2021
Luscious images of trees, flowers and seed-heads, vast ocean- and mountain- scapes, tropical maps and contested lands are presented alongside painted bright brick walls, open windows, sculpted chairs, rugs and jugs in this exhibition which is curated by Berlin-based, Venezuelan installation artist Sol Calero.
For Whitechapel Gallery’s second public presentation of works from the Hiscox Collection, Calero has created a world entirely of her own, one that celebrates both the natural and the domestic realms and includes artists such as Pio Abad, Polly Apfelbaum, John Baldessari, Yto Barrada, Alighiero Boetti, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Annie Leibovitz, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso and more.
Calero’s display invites us to think about the act of collecting, about what we choose to surround ourselves with in our homes and the importance and presence of the natural world.
LE SOLEIL SE LÈVE AUSSI 2021 - Manifesta, Lyon, France
QUINCUNX 2020 - Royal College of Art, London, UK.
RCA Curating Contemporary Art Programme. Online Exhibition.
The Order of Things. From Graph to the System 2020 - Fabrik 45, Bonn Germany
‘Die Ordnung der Dinge. Vom Graph zum System’, Fabrik 45, Bonn Germany. ‘The Order of Things. From Graph to the System’. A group exhibition of contemporary art alongside the Bonn University Museum collection and the art library of the Bonn Art Association.
Ocular Inc. 2019 - Thames-Side Studios Gallery, London, UK,
Thames-Side Studios Gallery, London, UK,
Subversive Stitch 2019 - TJ Boulting, London
TJ Boulting, London, 2019
Code Clay, Dirt Data 2019 - First Site, Colchester, UK
A large scale exhibition of a new body of artworks that make apparent the historical links and common process that shaped both the Roman city of Colchester and the digital landscape of the present. The display included original Roman pots from Colchester and Ipswich museums. A research period was spent in the Colchester and Ipswich museums collection.
Bauhaus*innen raum 2019 - Frauenmuseum, Bonn, Germany
An institutional exhibition curated by Marianne Pitzen on women textile art from the Bauhaus period to now.
PARADE, A Celebration of Contemporary Art Textiles 2019 - Broadway, Letchworth Garden City, UK
A public gallery funded by Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation, a Community Benefit Society. A survey and acclamation of recent developments in visual art textiles.
nth nature 2018 - Galerie Gisela Clement, Bonn, Germany
New Relics 2018 - Thames-Side Studios Gallery, London, UK
Thames-Side Studios Gallery, London, UK, 2018
nth nature 2018 - Assembly Point, London, UK
Identify your limitations, acknowledge the periphery 2017 - VITRINE, Basel, Switzerland
VITRINE, Basel, Switzerland, 2017
How the mind comes to be furnished 2016 - Space in Between, London
Collaborative work with James Irwin
PURE LIGHT 2015 - The Museum Vasarely of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
Curated by Dora Mauer
Which pixel am I standing on? 2015 - Maria Stenfors, London, UK
INTRO 2015 - Clement&Schneider, Bonn, Germany
Painting and Beyond 2014 - kunstgaleriebonn, Bonn, Germany
AIR 2014 - Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University, China
PLASTIK 2014 - Kunstgaleriebonn, Cologne
Passage and pair 2013 - Maria Stenfors, London, UK
Just as reading a text is a journey from start to finish, the reading of an artwork and exhibition is dictated by the same process. Lilah Fowler's exhibition invites us to explore our relationship to space and our experience of it, the passage of moving through a physical space and experiencing its proportions and elements. Separate elements are disassociated from their original context, creating an unexpected pairing of matter and material. The forced arrangement of space rendering the familiar unfamiliar.
Mathematically, they play with the artist's familiarity of the space, being a whole divided into a half and then a quarter, becoming a geometrical way of viewing spatial form. This is also repeated in the floor arrangements, thus becoming structures like the architectural landscape, reminding us of patterns, designs and plans for living spaces, but also the materials and components that make them up. A perpetual pairing of object and thought. The story is in the telling.
Maria Stenfors is excited to present its first solo exhibition with London based artist Lilah Fowler. Fowler presents new works and installations in the gallery, reconfiguring the gallery space and our perception of that space. Broadly referencing modernist and brutalist architecture and the UK housing systems such as in Camden Council, where the gallery is located but also where the artist lives and works. Fowler's research expands across a magnitude of planning design concepts and here Albert Frey is worth mentioning as his colour scheme is resonant in the exhibition. Each unique site that Fowler intervenes in creates new responses and these factors and variants are key, and the intervention at Maria Stenfors is welcomed with excitement.
Unspecific Objects 2013 - Malgras|Naudet, Manchester and The Royal Standard, Liverpool
Malgras|Naudet, Manchester and The Royal Standard, Liverpool, UK, 2013
Lilah Fowler: Circles, props and edges 2013 - Siobhan Davies Dance Studios, London, UK
Siobhan Davies Dance had the pleasure to present an exhibition by artist Lilah Fowler, whose work explores the relationship between visual art, movement and space. Fowler created new work, which directly responded to the design and architecture of Siobhan Davies Studios.
Fowler is particularly interested in the placement of artworks within the space and the way the audience navigates around them. Her work invites an awareness of the physical and psychological space, playing with illusion and perspective. Its placement encourages the viewer to explore around the objects, creating an individual sequence of movements and a spontaneous choreography.
Fowler’s work is often concerned with the imprint of time upon an object and how it influences our experience of it. The ways in which an object can gradually lose its function and reason or change from its original purpose is a key idea in her work, and was reflected in the title of the exhibition.
The tautology of ‘Round circles’ creates a sense of double vision and for this exhibition she created works in brass rings similar to hula hoops that propped against the building and a dance barre. They were static sculptures but at the same time they had the potential to be ‘props’ that could be picked up, used, or leaned against, inviting interpretation and reinterpretation.
Fowler was also interested in the way that we react to space socially, collectively and individually, especially to planned spaces for living. The ‘edges’ in the exhibition title became synonymous with the boundaries that the encourages us to look at our building with fresh eyes.’ Alison Proctor, Programme Manager
‘After spending time in the Siobhan Davies Studios space, I became particularly aware of my movement and presence within the building, this being in terms of my relation to the architecture and objects. Rather than creating a choreographic pattern of objects in space I am taking a closer look at the architectural design of the building to echo and accentuate this by working intentionally with its designed surfaces.’ Lilah Fowler
Un-Specific Objects 2013 - The Royal Standard, Liverpool and Malgras Naudet, Manchester, UK
In Belly of Paris, Emile Zola described the artist Claude Lantier (the hero of his novel, The Masterpiece) rearranging the meat products in the window of his cousin’s butchers shop. He did this according to an aesthetic sensibility rather than a taxonomy of meat. Chops, confit and charcuterie were instinctively organised into a display that the painter Lantier described as his only true great work. Sales in the shop fell, Lantier was chastised by his cousin and he was never asked to look after the business again. The focus of artistic practice had, in fiction at least, shifted from a rendering of objects in a still life to an arrangement of them.
Unspecific Objects questions the relationships between the art object and everyday objects. Without a focus on a particular medium or singular approach, the exhibition uses works by over twenty contemporary artists that contemplate the object in order to consider art’s enduring power to transform. Objects are manipulated, composed, constructed, remodelled, remade, rendered as image, placed, stacked, sculpted, painted or simply offered to the viewer. Some of the works are installed across the two sites of the exhibition; others present themselves as discreet objects. The cumulative effect of the works is a sustained focus on our relationship to things that surround us.
Artists. Dan Fogarty | Sharon Hall | Rafal Topolewski | Milo Brennan | Tom Fish | Damien Meade | Kevin Hunt | Jo Addison | Laurence Callaghan | Paul Cordwell | Claire Fontaine | Lilah Fowler | Samara Scott | Caroline Achaintre | Tom Railton | Lucy Clout | Matilda Moors | Desmond Church | Benedict Drew | Andrew Mcdonald | Tom Godfrey | Michael White
JTAG 2013 - Joshua Tree Art Gallery, Joshua Tree Desert, California, USA
Blind date 2013 - kunstgaleriebonn, Bonn, Germany
Cosmophobia 2012 - L'Altelier Kunst Spiel Raum, Berlin, Germany
'What is an end? One shudders perhaps. An end? Are there more than one? Is not the very question a violation of sorts? A ruthless denuding? Should death be pushed so harshly into my awareness? Can she not wait? Is it not permissible to sleep?' -Nick Land, Thirst for Annihilation.
Cosmophobia is characterised by an irrational fear of the cosmos and our place within it, that the universe will impose its malicious will against us in the form of some astronomical catastrophe or other. What this exhibition attempts, is to think through the opportunity of hopelessness. The curatorial proposition is that these six young artists are best placed to respond to or be affected by the political, economic and ecological territories that neoliberalism has bequeathed to us. Starting from a zero point of nihilist speculation art must think beyond the contemporary towards a realm of collected objectiveness divorced from the humanist promise of individual freedom. Upon the death of such ideology and the dawning of an age in which politics must transform into a category capable of making the move beyond its previous neoliberal dominion, art has a renewed mandate to engender a new political imaginary.
L'Atelier - Kunst(spiel)raum is proud to present it's first group show, Cosmophobia, curated by Tom Trevatt, displaying the works of International artists Adam Thompson, Justin Gainan, Iris Touliatou, Lilah Fowler, Mikko Canini and Olve Sande.
A Piece of Paper 2012 - Madder 139, London, UK
Endogenous 2012 - Maria Stenfors, London, UK
Maria Stenfors is proud to present Endogenous; a two week exhibition of works on paper by five young artists, a musical performance, and a talk on economic bubbles in relation to the contemporary art world by Professor Jan Toporowski.
In an age of austerity, where is the driving force for art and artists? Is the economic structure spurred on by external benefactors, or is art created and encouraged by a more internal structure? This series of exciting events from the platform of the gallery, brief in time and set in a domestic environment, plans to achieve a space where voices and inspirations that revolve around the gallery’s ethos have the opportunity to come together.
Endogenous Growth Theory is a concept within economics used to highlight that economic growth can be developed and nurtured from within, rather than externally. Key to the concept is the belief that investment in the population and human capital is key to economic growth. Opening up the gallery agora to fantastic artists and their captivating new works, a dynamic musical performance of urban life, and contemporary economic theory, the events promise to be an exuberant start to the Autumn.
Key to Endogenous is a works on paper exhibition by Francesca Anfossi, Eduardo Basualdo, David Cochrane, Lilah Fowler and Alan Magee. Each artist has been in an extended dialogue with the gallery, and this show takes advantage of the opportunity to present artworks by artists whose integrity the gallery has faith in.
BB#8: Dawdle Blackboard 2012 - SPACE, London, UK
band 2011 - Space in Between , London, UK
Lilah Fowler’s practice explores ideas around the imprint of time on an object and how it influences our relationship to space and experience. Her works are often installed in response to the gallery environment and address a serendipitous and spontaneous reaction to form, space and surface.
With Fowler's work there is a play between illusion and perspective. The sense of physical and psychological place within and around the works and how the body navigates them is as important as their positioning.
End of Line 2011 - Waterside Contemporary, London, UK
Point. Line. Plane 2011 - Hannah Barry Gallery, London, UK
Bold Tendencies 5 2011 - Peckham Multi-story Carpark, London, UK
Hong Kong Art Fair: Art Futures 2011 - Hong Kong Art Fair: Art Futures, Hong Kong, China
Peeping Tom 2011 - Kunsthal KaDe Amersfoort, Netherlands
Modal: Lilah Fowler and Dan Miller 2010 - Cartel Gallery, London, UK
Architectural Disorder 2010 - OVADA, (Visual Arts Development Agency for the City of Oxford and the County of Oxfordshire) curated by Launch Collaborative: Architectural Disorder, Oxford
MAXIMAL MINIMAL 2009 - Primopiano, Lugano, Switzerland
Bank of America Corporate Arts Programme, 2009 2009 - Bank of America, London, UK
Lilah Fowler 2009 - Brown, London , UK
Lilah Fowler 2009 - Corn Exchange Gallery, Edinburgh, UK
Sie Machen Was Sie Wollen - Varna City Gallery, Bulgaria,
Two person show, ‘The House of Nature’ with Eva L’Hoest, curated by Melange, Cologne, Germany. A reconfiguration of ‘nth nature’ was presented, including several new works and artefacts.
PURE LIGHT – PUSZTA FÉNY -
PURE LIGHT show catalogue, curated by Dora maker and published by Open Structures Art Society 2015
Joshua Tree Artist Residency - Joshua Tree Artist Residency, Joshua Tree Desert, California, USA
Joshua Tree Artist Residency (JTAR) in Joshua Tree Desert, National Park, California, USA. SIx week residency.