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Sculpture (MA)

Emma Sheehy

A frog bride searches for their divine counterpart, tongue outstretched for passing flies to munch through in the meantime.

b.1992

2021-2023 MA Sculpture, Royal College of Art

2011-2015 BA Fine Art, Leeds University

2013-2014 Dresden Academy of Fine Arts

2010-2011 Foundation Diploma, Camberwell College of The Arts


Recent & upcoming exhibitions

2023 New Contemporaries, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool

2023 New Contemporaries, Camden Arts Centre, London

2023 Semantics of Love, Hangar Space, London

2023 Red in Tooth and Claw, Filet Space, London

2023 Soft and Hard - Bermondsey Project Space, London

2022 Lapped Seams and Silver Linings, Standpoint Gallery, London

2022 We Won't Stop Showing, SET Woolwich, London

2022 Too Much Fruit on The Cake, The Amersham Arms, London


Awards and Residencies

2023 New Contemporaries

2022 Merz Barn Residency

2017 Artichoke Printing Prize


Degree Details

School of Arts & HumanitiesSculpture (MA)RCA2023 at Truman Brewery

Truman Brewery, F Block, Ground, first and second floors

Emma kneels by a tree under a canopy of green leaves in magical Epping Forest.

Emma Sheehy creates imaginative spaces that are escapist, funny and folkloric. They are filled with a somewhat weaponised naïveté. Often drawing upon medieval-inspired imagery, she builds up a collection of creatures to play with again and again in paintings and sculptures. Emma’s work is influenced by pre-modern polytheistic mythologies, medieval manuscripts and awkward public interactions. 

Emma uses her research as a means of understanding the present. Her impish creatures complicitly smile at our contemporary moment and the repeating patterns we find ourselves in. They seek to communicate that to love is a freedom from pain.

Making work that privileges love has influenced Emma's commitment to producing sculpture that is sustainably minded – mostly out of wood and carefully sourced materials.


A carved sun protrudes out of a wooden block. They look on above watery mountains with a pink face and yellow coils.
A carved sun protrudes out of a wooden block. They look on above watery mountains with a pink face and yellow coils.
Snail licking the sun
snail licking another snail
snails all carved into a block of wood

~

For me, love is radical. It sees others in their dark spirals with sympathy and offers help when needed. It is not a secluded experience. Bell Hooks’s The Will to Change offers a caring take on patriarchical setups. Hooks proposes a ‘culture of healing’ to give space and opportunity for change which ‘does not take place in isolation, [apparent oppressors] who love and [apparent oppressors] who long to love know this. We need to stand by them, with open hearts and open arms. We need to stand ready to hold them, offering a love that can shelter their will to change’.[1]


[1] I have replaced ‘men’ with ‘apparent oppressors’ because I don’t want to create a separation between myself and those different from me when I trust that we are all ultimately––outside of the structures that we find ourselves in now––the same. Bell Hooks, The Will to Change (New York: Atria Books, 2004) p.188.

Medium:

Bees Wax, Pigment and Acrylic Stained Jelutong and Pine

Size:

60x74x20cm
folklorehandmademagic-realismmagicalthinkingpaintingstainingwoodwood-carvingwoodwork
A carved worm with wings stands on oak tendrils.
The repeating worm in my work has become a symbol of queerness and resilience: a creature that can be split apart and regrow—feel pleasure after being cut. Earthworms are covered in taste-buds, open to viscerally feeling everything that touches their crimson strands. They are part of the sluggish moisture-world and when they partner, do so as two hermaphroditic creatures switching back and forth between femininity and masculinity in wet moments amongst the vibrations of rainfall.
A carved worm with wings stands on oak tendrils.
Close up of a defiant worm.

Medium:

Bees Wax, Acrylic and pigment stained hand carved Lime Wood and oak

Size:

29x36x15cm
magicmagicalthinkingpaintingwood-carvingwoodcarvingworm-wings
Front of the carving. A mad scene -- worms fly, snails watch on and a frog is sticking out their tongue.
Two snails watch on as a worm grips their tongue for fear of having swallowed it. Plants brighten against the greying backdrop having soaked up the last of the sun at twilight. A large winged worm is a meeting of heaven and earth - hope in a purgatorial place.
Side view which includes a worm along the side of the carving.

Medium:

Bees Wax, Acrylic and pigment stained hand carved Lime Wood

Size:

59x49.5x14.5cm
folklorehandcrafthandmademagicpaintingwoodcarvingwoodwork
carved purple snake like, some eared worms wrap around a long piece of carved wood
Stained by you I’ve taken to bathing in the sea. I re-emerge covered in salts. As it hardens on my skin, memories of us plunge into my throat like an unwelcome wave.
carved purple snake like, some eared worms wrap around a long piece of carved wood
This week I saw two dead deer. The first one shocked me so much I shuddered and clasped my hand over my mouth. The wretchedness of its perfect, muscular, once warm body ready to decompose back into the earth has stayed with me. The second was expected.
carved purple snake like, some eared worms wrap around a long piece of carved wood
Finding two cedar mothballs in the pocket of my Grandma’s cardigan made me think of us and our shared dream the last night we slept in the same bed. I saw you as an angry ball of wind filled with leaves encircling one another.
side view of the snakes coming into the back of the carving -- a moon above water
I’ve been tearing at the earth lately to bury you with the worms. To let their red strands digest and neutralise each yearning.
moon reflecting onto water carving
I have often dreamt of sinking into the earth in a small, fern filled, lush forest opening. I’d let the mud and worms fill my every orifice and follow them as they guide me back to connectedness, oneness.
moon reflecting onto water carving
Plump droplets from the willow splash onto my forehead as I turn the page of my book. A fruit fly crawls along my finger prompting stillness, which makes me a perfect friend for the shield bug who is happily pacing up and down my stretched out leg. A tiny iridescent beetle sits on my knee, stroking its antennae with its front legs. I offer my finger, it accepts. We look at one another for a while.

~

My friend and I took a trip to the sea to inscribe our 

hopes, wishes and dreams on the pearlescent inside of a 

collection of oyster shells. After placing them at the shore we 

watched the pigment get lapped up and drawn into the sea.

To celebrate the ritual we waded into the water to bathe – 

laughing, stripped, cleansed. After our baptism we threw our 

shells up high and witnessed them splash into approaching 

waves as the sun began to set. 


For now, I dream of seedlings sprouting from a pointing finger. Thickening, greening with roots intertwining. One oak, one beech.

Medium:

Bees Wax, Gold leaf, Pigment and Acrylic Stained Jelutong and Pine

Size:

34x97x21cm
ecologyfolklorehandmademythologypaintingsustainable-processwoodcarvingwoodwork
snail curled up within a green luscious setting surrounded by flowers
The side of the carving. The snail can be seen as can a lapping worm
A bird crying pearl tears is surrounded by an eye filled sky
Pearl tears shatter as the little bird consumes itself stuffing down the fiery belly only to regurgitate a lapping worm
From the side you can see the bird is throwing up a lapping worm which looks like a long long tongue.

Medium:

Bees Wax, Acrylic and pigment stained hand carved Lime Wood, ply and oak

Size:

14x25x4cm
ecologymagicpaintingsustainable-processwoodcarvingwoodwork
worm with wings drawing on paper

Medium:

Ink on paper

Size:

29.7x42cm
drawingpainting
A switchback zigzag pink worm fills a square the carving stands on some yellow legs.
Wings on the side of the carving coming out of the worm rendering them magical

Medium:

Bees Wax, Acrylic and pigment stained hand carved Lime Wood, ply and oak

Size:

14x25x4cm
ecologyfolklimemagicmagicalthinkingsustainable-processwoodwood-carvingworm-wings
half a deer sits in a field of flowers

Medium:

Ink on paper

Size:

29.7x42cm
drawingpainting
A painting of a dead pigeon is surrounded by wings, shell and stone

Medium:

Ink and Acrylic on hand-made paper with carved lime wood wings, pebble and shell

Size:

35x50cm
drawingpainting
A red and yellow tapestry with snails, worms and other beasties scattered across

In Collaboration with:

Medium:

Jacquard weaving

Size:

75x75cm
tapestryweave
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Royal College of Art

Registered Office: Royal College of Art,
Kensington Gore, South Kensington,
London SW7 2EU