Amy Gardner
Amy Gardner is an Australian born, London based multidisciplinary artist, best known for her bold use of colour and uplifting art prints. The driving force behind her work is celebrating womanhood, the power of women supporting women, and respectfully nodding to the movement and ‘history of effort’ gifted to us from generations of women before us.
Gardner is particularly interested in the experience of women, the hidden labour, and the physical movements of women. She often uses humour with found images from 1950’s advertising to smash the ideal of the 'perfect woman' illustrating just how archaic, yet prevalent in contemporary culture these ideals are. Bringing an instinctive and playful element to her work; she is non-apologetic, non-conformist, and bold in her approach. Her artistic output isn’t planned; it's very much from a place of following urges, instincts, and flow. Every new season of work tells a different story.
To amplify the message of celebrating our imperfections and embracing our uniqueness Gardner deliberately works outside of the realm of printing standards; mis-registering, imperfect hand cut stencils, as well as pushing and disregarding perceived limits. In this respect, her work could be seen to hint at the often subtle ways in which women have historically subverted the constraints of their 'allotted' roles.
As a multidisciplinary artist, Gardner merges many print mediums, lino, screenprint, and monoprint, often combining them with gestural flow like movements (or swooshes and splats), ink pulling, collage and photography. She uses energetic movement, colour, and flow to produce her work. Her tools, outside of the print studio, are wide and varied; spatulas, squeegees, tea towels, brooms, rolling pins and wallpaper brushes.
Gardner works from her home studio as well as from communal print studios across London. Her wall art can be found in various private collections worldwide and currently exhibits with a number of galleries across the UK, and sells at various international art fairs.
