Jacqueline Duncan is a fine artist working in Devon. Born in 1967 she studied at the London College of Fashion and has lived and worked in Milan, Sao Paulo, and New York, where she worked in fashion and photography before devoting herself to fine art. In Brazil she worked with many of the leading architects and interior designers as well as exhibiting widely in a number of contemporary galleries. Following the birth of her daughter, Jacqueline moved first to Europe and eventually to Devon to her studio on the edge of the river Dart, where she resumed her career, with the river informing much of her current work.
The initial response to her new environment was through the use of textiles in an interpretation of organic forms, both underwater and from the water’s edge, investigating its froth ripples and foam. Working with nature and materials that range from silk and gemstones to black-eyed beans, she engaged with the everchanging aquatic worlds that she observed and incorporated them into a variety of landscapes created from heat formed fabrics, often woven with shells, stones and other found materials. These landscapes explored both the interface between water and land but also the biomorphic forms reminiscent of the plankton and soft-shelled creatures which inhabit the water’s edge, and in a prescient way the shapes and forms of viral life that invaded the fluidity of our bloodstreams.
Her interest grew in the water’s edge and it’s interface with the beach and the twigs and driftwood intwined with seaweed. This interface between elements has been explored recently through a series of constructions, in which discarded sticks have been woven into complex shapes where wood, both matchsticks and driftwood twigs are constrained by stainless steel armatures and tubular netting to form complex biomorphic forms, a metaphor of the interface between movement and solidity.
The dialectic of sensuous fluidity and structured geometry is explored further in the Pin Works where Jacqueline moved from the water’s edge to the water’s surface which animated by wind, tide and passing traffic creates a constant aquascape between the observer and the observed.
The Pin Works consist of a series of interacting grids formed by cutting large painted and drawn images into tiny squares and fixing them to the heads of pins, angled to reflect the movement of the river’s surface. The work investigates the interaction of the tide, the coming and passing of the day and the multi-layered micro details of the everchanging foreshore.
The underside of the tiny square images are painted in iridescent orange which creates an optical play capturing the magic of the sunset reflecting off the rivers surface and animates the work . These works explore the reflective and repetitive patterns of surface and water that subtly shine and shimmer as they are transformed through the observers interaction from two dimensional surfaces into every changing sculptural forms bathed in the reflected glow of the setting sun.
These works seem to fuse the influences of earlier works by English constructionist Kenneth Martin, with the kinetic structures of Jesus Rafael Soto within a diagrammatic framework reminiscent of aquatic flow patterns.
During the development of the Pin Works Jacqueline started using a laser cutting machine to help form the complex grids of the cut drawings. In her latest work Jacqueline starts to question the relationship between the grid and the complex fluidity of nature explored in the Pin Works and further develops it through the “Fold Works” where the grid itself morphs into fluidity.
solo exhibitions
2023 ‘Eclectic refraction’, Galeria Sergio Caribe, Sao Paulo, Brasil
2022 ‘Aquascape’, Coombe Gallery, Dartmouth
2021 ‘Observe : Obverse’, Ken Artspace, London
2018 Devon Open Studios
2017 Devon Open Studios
2016 South East Open Studios
2015 South East Open Studios
2004 Werner Arnhold Galeria, Sao Paulo
2001 Galeria D’Art Portdoguer, Cadaques, Spain
2001 Esfera, Sao Paulo
2001 No Meio do Caminho, Rio de Janeiro
1989 Chequers Gallery, London
group exhibitions
2023 Guildford House Open
2023 Wells Art Contemporary
2023 London Art Biennale
2023 Royal West of England Academy Sculpture Open Exhibition
2022 Visual Art Open, London
2021 ‘The Sea’, Coombe Gallery, Devon
2020 ‘Estuary – the elements’, Devon
2019 Royal West of England Academy Sculpture Open exhibition
2019 Rebirth, Coombe Gallery, Devon
2005 Museum Contemporary Art, Sao Paulo
2005 Museum Contemporary Art , Rio de Janeiro
2002 Chapel Art Show, Sao Paulo
2001 Galeria la Riba, Cadaques, Spain
2001 Chapel Art Show Sao Paulo
1999 Amostra Artefacto, Sao Paulo