Camilla Shivarg is showing a selection of sculptures tracing a history of friendships with models and creative camaraderie from the 1980’s to today.

Working from the human figure, the pieces in the exhibition are testament to her passion for clay and to the absurdities inherent in wresting solidity and detail from a material which can change from malleable to unworkable in a matter of days. When successful, these bodies kneeling, turning or reclining are a marvel of engineering; since like Karin Jonzen, one of Shivarg’s great influences, these figures are all executed without internal armature or support. 

Her studio in Earls Court has for years been a haven for fellow sculptors, where an early need to share the resources of space and models’ time has evolved into a preference for companionship and of coming together for the common purpose of making. 

The result is an exhibition characterised by a sense of intimacy born of Camilla Shivarg’s attentiveness and fascination with the human form, and how its outward appearance expresses personality and lived experience. Presented in fired clay, bronze and bronze resin, old friends and new are brought together in silent dialogue, markers of moments shared; bodies in time and the hands that made them. 

Isabel de Vasconcellos
June 2024

“I am a modeller rather than a carver and my favourite mediums are clay and wax. My work is either cast in Bronze or Bronze Resin, or fired at a high temperature to get a good colour and to make the larger pieces frost-proof.

I aim to achieve a timeless quality in my work. When a model is naked there are no references to the time we are in and I hope that in a hundred years, should the work still exist, the dignity and vitality that I found in the model will still strike a chord”.

T: 020 7373 0080 E: cshivarg@btopenworld.com

Trained at Chelsea and Wimbledon Art Schools.
BA in Fine Art Painting.
Afterwards studied sculpture with Karin Jonzen.

Exhibitions include –
The Guardian’s ‘Art for Sale’ at Whiteleys
Solo and Group shows at the Edith Grove Gallery
Carlos Lozano Gallery – Cadaques, Spain
‘Art for Youth’ at Mall Galleries
‘A Celebration of Sculpture’ at the Chelsea Arts Club
‘St.James Group Portrait Show’ – Henry Wyndham Gallery
Nine Elms Group Show
Bath Arts Fair
Chelsea Festival
Solo and Group shows at Gallery 286

“Camilla Shivarg’s sculpture shows neither the modern taste for idiosynchratic self-exhibitionism nor the imitative realism of the figure, but a real fusion of the subject and the artist.

There are no figures just like hers, and her portraits will continue to be admired for this quality and not at all for just being a replica of the sitter.

Her dancers and acrobats have inherent rhythm and grace, without a trace of ‘arrested movement’ – the petrified look that mars so much sculpture.”

Karin Jonzen (FRBS)

2024 exhibition at Gallery 286