Shelly Bancroft

Arcadian Light, 35 x 28 x 4 cm, 2019

Light & Line

11 November – 15 December 2021

Private views:
Thursday November 11th 6.30 – 8.30pm
Sunday November 14th 12.00 – 3.00pm
Tuesday December 14th 6.30 – 8.30pm

Open Days:
Wednesdays 12.00 – 6.00pm

Viewing by appointment at other times.

For further information contact Jonathan Ross:
Phone 07747 807576
or jross@gallery286.com

Shelly Bancroft had a peripatetic childhood, full of adventure, travelling in Africa and also to Argentina before settling in Oxford at the age of eleven. Living in remote areas of the Tropics introduced her to the magic of different worlds and cultures.

Since her MA at the Royal College of Art Film School, she has worked in the film industry as a Creative Affairs Executive (for a Hollywood studio) and in Film Acquisitions, Development and as a Creative Producer.

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Realising that she missed the tactile process of making an image, she has returned to figurative art (in parallel with her work in film). Her interest in light and form – not only through film making, but observational drawing, etching and watercolour, has evolved into an enchantment with the line and contour of relief sculpture and most recently, the translucency of porcelain and casting in glass.

Inspired by ancient Asian, Eastern and Greek iconography, her work explores themes around physical intimacy, vitality and memory – representations of touch and being, whether they be images of sanctity or passion. She has been using a haptic technique of indentation on small plaques, to capture moments of presence and form, like footprints in the sand. Making positive versions of the indented work has been a process around conjuring an enshrinement of touch in a transitory world. She is now casting her sculpture in glass, working with glass artists Lolita Diot-Parslow and Monette Larson. She is also starting to explore evocations of physical and spiritual energy with porcelain and light.

In 2019 she presented her porcelain relief sculpture of The Resurrection to St.Gabriel’s Anglo-Catholic Church, Pimlico, in the presence of the Bishop of London. She has now completed a new commission depicting Adam and Eve for St. Gabriel’s.

She is also interested in representational figurative work and has had a number of portrait commissions, both faces and nudes; drawings, paintings and relief sculpture.

Leeds University, BA Fine Art (Hons) – art and film making practise and history of art and film.
Royal College of Art, School of Film and Television, MA.RCA.