STRUCTURE AND SENTIMENT

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Featured Artist: Rachel Mortlock

Rachel Mortlock is a London-based sculptor and installation artist who primarily works with casting, mould making, and woodwork. Her practice explores ecology, space, and built environments, using materials that reflect architectural components and infrastructure. Through this approach, she highlights the capacity of materials and objects to record events and local histories. Mortlock’s installations contemplate the visual language of longing and nostalgia, narrating her everyday encounters while unraveling the complexities of domestic relationships.

After graduating with a BA from Arts University Bournemouth in 2018, Mortlock was shortlisted for the Platform Graduate Award and exhibited at Aspex Gallery in Portsmouth. She later became part of an artist collective, co-curating a pop-up exhibition in Marylebone in 2019. During the pandemic, she established a project space to encourage experimentation and collaboration. In 2020, the collective’s photographs were published by Parc Collective and Granary Arts in Utah, and they presented a site-specific installation for the Brighton Photo Fringe at Phoenix Arts Space.

In 2022, Mortlock co-curated an exhibition at Filet, featuring 23 artists and providing a space for them to showcase experimental or emerging ideas in a collaborative framework. That same year, she was commissioned by Object Multiple to produce two series of small sculptural editions. In 2023, she was invited to create her first permanent sculpture in Bölcske, Hungary. Recently, she has exhibited at Cromwell Place with The Royal Society of Sculptors, New Art Projects, 44AD Gallery in Bath, and held a solo exhibition at 36 Gallery in Newcastle. Mortlock has also participated in residencies at Nocefresca in Sardinia and PADA Studios in Portugal in 2023 and 2024.