Caroline Ashley

My practice explores assemblage, soft sculpture; referencing repetition and hand driven processes. Textiles and fabrics are at the forefront; I work intuitively, collecting, thinking through my hands, using vibrant found objects. Material exploration and literacy, leads to unmaking and remaking, assembling and reassembling, materialising and dematerialising.

My research at the RCA has explored pattern as a negotiation of our entangled environment. Pattern and repetition are within our built landscape, woven threads clothe and protect us, ecosystems grow and flow through organic sequences of movement and lifecycles. The human-digital encounter is facilitated through pattern recognition and algorithmic systems, connecting us to cascading global networks. Humans exhibit recurring behavioural patterns, engaging in both positive and negative routines and macro to micro cycles of damage and repair. My work invites the viewer to fragment their reflection and engage in spatial play, by representing multiple perspectives simultaneously; obscuring and revealing the environment encouraging active participation.