Text Sculptures
2018-2022
All artworks and images copyright of Nicola Anthony, 2017-2022
Each artwork is shaped by the story it contains.
Metal sculptures (Stainless Steel), Sizes variable
“Text has been a theme within my work since the early days of my career. I focus on untold narratives, social memory, and place memory.”
Nicola Anthony is a text artist creating metal sculptures large and small, which fill space with words, stories, secrets and life testimonies. Her material can be steel, gold, or toughened metals, woven into the delicate forms of words suspended inside bell jars, glass vessels, or even suspended from the ceiling as if levitating. The metal sentences come together, reflecting the viewer's face in the high shine surface, projecting their shadows into the surrounding space, and telling the story of human lives as they twist and turn.
Each of Nicola's works is shaped by the story it contains - multilayered, fragile, suspended in time. These personal pieces are often commissioned to tell a life story, a verbal portrait, or a significant phrase or quote.
In similar works commissioned for museums and art institutions, Nicola's process of capturing unheard voices has led her text sculptures to navigate topics such as: social and political undercurrents in Myanmar, Singapore, SouthEast Asia; Narratives that pierce through time to WW2 such as Holocaust survivors testimonies and stories that are found in the porous surfaces of London’s bombed buildings; and individual untold stories from disenfranchised communities.
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so, Inspirations Series by Nicola Anthony, 2018. Stainless steel
About the artwork pictured above, ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’, is a series of small text sculptures:
“Made from quotes both everyday and famous, which have given me creative inspiration over the years. They are each paired with a letter from the artist talking about the quote and how it shaped a particular life moment or even the making of a bigger artwork. In today’s world it’s hard to keep believing ourselves and in the power of art to make a difference, but we keep going. I wanted to honour all the people, icons and moments which have helped me along my artistic path.”