Sculpture and Installation

Jessica’s most recent works have been immersive installations, labyrinths, or contemplation spaces. These, largely outdoor places, allow audiences time out and space to breath, grief, think or just be. Many of these installations have components within which encourage people to slow down – lighting candles, soundscapes, taking shoes and socks off to enter for example.

Most recently Jessica created The Sanctuary for National Memorial Arboretum and  The Rubus, a seven domed labyrinth at The Yorkshire Sculpture Park. She also created The Arizical another labyrinth structure for Chester . And her piece The Return has been touring with Walk the Plank as part of their fire gardens. It was part of Lightwaves Festival at Media City Manchester in 2023 and Wild Wanders in Rochdale in 2024.

A member of Royal Society of Sculptures, in her sculptural practice, Jessica largely works with reclaimed metal and found objects. A skilled metal worker, she loves the processes and the malleable  possibilities of ferrous material as well as the mutable qualities of natural materials. The performance, intervention, participatory and sculptural elements are devised hand-in-hand.

I enjoy uncovering connections between everyday, found or discarded materials and linking them to unfolding human stories or my own emotional/internal narrative. This narrative has been around tolerance/intolerance, understanding and misunderstanding of one another, bio-diversity and cohabitation. These materials are interconnected, the relationships are implied on an individual, political and universal level in my work. 

Her sculpture is often kinetic: large scale structures, Art-bikes, car sculpture, site-specific, immersive or interactive.

Mechanical sculpture created for ‘2nd Point of Contact’ exhibition

“Jessica exudes her creativity, passion and wild personality into all her projects.  She creates work that wows audiences and brings imagination to life.  Her skills in idea creation and creature building is unmatched in the region”

Lucy Bedford, Executive Director, the Stables

 

Jessica finished studying an MA at University of Leeds in 2021, graduating with a distinction in Fine Art.  She continues to develop her sculpture practice and her research into low-impact artmaking and sustainable practice. Most recently Jessica has been experimenting with alternative living structures.

You can visit the on-line exhibition of final MA work here.

Recent productions include: 

The Arizical is a new immersive piece on exhibition at Grosvenor Park, Chester, until the end on March 2022. A contemplation space inspired by organic networks, like those of fungi mycelium, plant roots and nerve synapses. Whether it’s microcosmic scales within our bodies or hidden underground in the dark, they are creeping, stirring, terraforming.

It is part of Spring Blooms, the third and final part of Chester Designed by Nature, a project commissioned and produced by Wild Rumpus.

 

  • potential matter of the gaps (detail)

    potential matter of the gaps, is a site specific piece, initially created for MA interim show Pause. The piece describes an intimacy of being, where all matter is interconnected. The stands – connections – between objects follow material rules and the representation –the hierarchy of the apparent objects – is removed so that the focus is not on the nodes of matter but on the conditionally of the ‘becomings’ or the ‘arisings’.

The Return  is an immersive piece recently commissioned by Walk the Plank as part of their touring fire gardens. It premiered at Greenwich and Dockland festival in September 2021, as part of the Reflection Gardens.

 

 

The piece is one of a series of work and research, through which the artist Jessica Rost, asks the question:

“Can we create places and moments which provide refuge from this eco-anxiety? Can we create art which isn’t necessarily providing solutions, grabbing attention or preaching change but allowing people to ‘be’. Can we create spaces of sanctuary and stillness which allow us to feel our loss, share our joy and reflect on our feelings of disconnect?

Shrine to the Liminal is a dedication to our ‘encounters’, our relationships and our connections with other species and with each other, in a time we are forever passing from. It is an immersive space of sounds and raw light which attempts to slow people down, allowing them to just ‘be’ in the space.

The sound is created from recordings made at twilight and at dawn – liminal times of day when the natural becomes more prominent. The sounds are on differing length loops so that the experience is always changing and never repeats.

 

The passion controller

Jessica has exhibited her work internationally and has taken part in many residencies and workshops. You can see her CV here.

In February 2020 Jessica presented work as part of PAUSE -interim MA exhibition. You can explore some of the work she created here.

In 2019 she created  several new kinetic sculpture pieces as part of a series of one-day gallery takeovers by the newly formed exhibiting group, Digital & Electronic Arts.

Undercurrent – Contemporary Arts was the first of these one day exhibitions at NN Contemporary Art, Northampton.

2018 saw the creation of a new body of work for a group exhibition, ‘2nd Point of Contact’, alongside artists Emma Talbot and Claire Summerson, shown at Milton Keynes Museum as part of MK Festival Fringe.

 I have always had an interest in the inherent or residual power of materials, especially within found objects. I’m intrigued by the way archetypal symbols can transfer subliminally into everyday stories or narratives; somehow impacting our decisions or helping to decode our lives, and continually guiding us on our different journeys.

You can see more of Jessica’s Sculpture and Installation work here