The Artist

"Working with materials rather than words gets me closer to what I want to say."

Working from her studio in London and studios in Italy and East Sussex, Almuth is inspired by process: she loves the way objects of beauty and intrigue can emerge from a noisy session cutting and welding steel, sparks flying in every sense; or from a quieter but no less messy afternoon pushing wet clay around.

It’s the simple fact of working with her hands to distil from dull, reluctant matter, pieces that are always interesting, always challenging, invariably searching, frequently witty, often profound, and sometimes breathtakingly lovely. It is this physical labour of art that draws her restless spirit to sculpture.

Born in Furstenau in north-west Germany, she moved to the UK in 1969 where she studied ceramics at the Sir John Cass School of Art, before setting up a studio in London. For the next six years she made studio ceramics, while developing her ideas for sculpture.

By 1981, Almuth had established her Southfields studio in a former church hall. At first she worked in clay and wood, but later studied metal fabrication at South Thames College, London. Her early pieces were monochrome, mostly grey, abstract explorations of space and volume through geometric devices.

Since the early nineties, Almuth has been moving towards a freer mode of expression, creating explosive forms in bright colours through a steady evolution of processes, investigating her current themes of light, space and the origins of matter.

Photograph by Anne Purkiss.