Abi Charlesworth (b.1997) is currently finishing her MFA at Glasgow School of Art and will be working towards her debut solo show at GLOAM, Sheffield in March, 2025. She has recently had work shown in Chaos Reigns, Warehouse at David Dale Gallery, HFBK x GSA, Hamburg and GSA x HFBK, The Glue Factory, Glasgow. She was also awarded a Gane Trust Grant Award in 2023 and a Gilbert Bayes funding award in 2024 to continue the development of new work.

Abi Charlesworth’s sculptural work surrounds the ideas of object debris and mutation. In transforming the object through materials she alters the functionality and displaces the object into a new landscape. As fictionalised objects they reference the original form before deteriorating and shedding the old objects skin. Anew and functionless they roam between reality and dreams searching for shelter. Charlesworth’s sculptural language is deeply rooted in peripheral object encounters where she is drawn to out of place and partial objects. As a dialogue between herself and the object she converses with the form, material and scale to unfold the objects narrative. Her more recent work explores the boundaries of fossils, material-scape and traces. In researching around these subjects she is interested in the tension that can be held by objects and landscape.

Coded small details are included in the installations as pointers and hints towards the original sculptural encounter with the object. In re-staging the narrative the remnants of an event acts as memories, shifting focus to a new timeline that is temporal and site specific. Each work plays on personal experience with objects and landscape pushing the form through her own understandings, to regurgitate and make sense of the world Charlesworth negotiates. As clues her sculptures relate to each other conversing to produce a new narrative, feeling or atmosphere, allowing herself to unravel closer to comprehension.