Annabel Tennyson-Davies

Annabel Tennyson-Davies (b.2001) is an interdisciplinary artist, originally from Buckinghamshire, now living and working in London. She received her Double Distinction UAL Extended Diploma in Art & Design from Buckinghamshire College Group and her First Class BA Honours in Fine Art from the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, graduating in 2022. Annabel was awarded the RIPE residency prize with ‘a space’ arts and completed a six month residency at the Alfred Arcade in Southampton. She was also shortlisted for the CVAN South East Platform Graduate Award and exhibited at The Platform Graduate Award 2022 at Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth. Annabel is currently studying MA Sculpture at the RCA.

Selected solo and group exhibitions:

• HUNG, DRAWN & QUARTERED, Standpoint Gallery, London, 2023
• Everything is Temporary, 3 Locks Brewery, Camden, London, 2023
• Red, Free and Enemy, Staffordshire St, Peckham, London, 2023
• Toxic Green, Climate Exhibition, Studio Building, Royal College of Art, Battersea London, 2023
• CANYON, RuptureXIBIT, Kingston, London, 2023
• Boiling Point - Practice Post Art School, Open Hand Open Space Gallery, Reading, 2023
• RIPE FIVE: Emergence, God's House Tower, Southampton, 2023
• Platform Graduate Award 2022, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, 2022
• Equilibrium, Winchester School of Art Degree Show, Winchester, 2022
• Glitch, Winchester Gallery, 2022
• Equilibrium II, RIPE Plums, Alfred Arcade, Southampton, 2022
• Boiling Point, Yellow Edge Gallery Portsmouth, 2022
• Rose Garden, Mottisfont National Trust, Winchester Gallery, Winchester, 2021
• Fingerless, The Struwig Miniature Gallery, Winchester, 2021
• Ominous Frog, West Side, Winchester School of Art, Winchester, 2020
• The Beauty of Nature, The Railway Inn, Winchester, 2020

Awards & Residencies: 

• Prick and Stitch, HUNG, DRAWN & QUARTERED, Standpoint Gallery, London, 2023
• FRESH 2: Boiling Point, Open Hand Open Space Gallery, Reading, 2023
• RIPE, 6 Month Residency, Alfred Arcade, Southampton, 2022-2023
• Platform Graduate Award 2022, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, 2022
• Transform Your World, Ars Electronica and Johannes Kepler University, Austria 2021

Press/ Talks/ Publications

• Stories of In-Between, The Pluralist Newspaper, 2023
• Panel Discussion- Practice Post Art School, Open Hand Open Space, Reading 2023
• Transform Your World, Press Conference, Ars Electronica and Johannes Kepler University, Austria 2021

Annabel works from a phenomenological perspective, abstracting phenomena from her everyday experiences of living. She documents this sculpturally, thinking through making. Annabel develops her ideas towards metaphor where her sculptural outcomes take on narratives which can resonate with us all.

She has recently been exploring the phenomena of balance and stability, her interest arising from her personal experiences of the spinning sensation resulting from constant vertigo. Annabel often produces figurative sculptures, experimenting with ways of keeping them stable in a spinning world with shifting gravities. Her figurative work is also informed by classical figurative sculpture, an interest sparked from living in London. She is fascinated by the visible support structures such as drapery, as used by classical sculptors and in the way old statues decay over time.

Annabel works in whatever medium best conveys her ideas, frequently using recycled materials. She innovates with new technologies and improvises with the traditional, moving freely between methods and materials. This year, she has produced 3D prints, bronzes, films, performances, installations and paper pulp sculptures.

Her figurative sculptures usually begin with 3D scans of her own body. In this work, Annabel performs, scans, 3D prints, rescans and digitally manipulates the forms. She chooses to leave in computer generated physical support scaffolding created during the 3D printing process, then rescans to merge the figure and scaffolding, sometimes putting her sculptures back through the process many times during her experimental process.