Studio A4 | Lynn Fulton
Veil by Lynn Fulton. Photo courtesy of the artist.
RESIDENCY: 12 April – 7 June 2025
Nottingham-based artist Lynn Fulton is undergoing a production residency in Studio A4. She will make new work for an experimental group exhibition opening this Autumn.
Fulton will pay close attention to the architectural features in Gallery 1—the Grade II listed Victorian windows and how the white translucent cascading curtains undulate and interact with sunlight. Her work will trace the contours of the shadows to explore flatness. Through an investigation into spatial perception, she will play with the collapsing, flattening, and reconstruction of sculptural form, as well as the smoothness of a surface.
After a studio visit, Primary’s curator noticed how Fulton’s practice does away with the formal staunchness, pristinity and perceived masculinity—traditional representations of strength and power—of what we might expect from some modernist sculpture created in 20th-century America and Europe. This artist’s work does not have the gravitas and spatial dominance of Richard Serra or is made out of expensive material like stone, as seen in the works of Barbara Hepworth or commercial materials, like American artist Donald Judd. Instead, Fulton leans into a spiritual material sensibility, a curiosity with contrasts and paradoxes, and an interest in using everyday materials such as plywood, which she shares with artist Diane Simpson and her tutor during art school in the 1990s, Dame Phyllida Barlow. Her work also embraces the betweeness of painting and sculpture while investigating three dimensions or ‘real space’ (Donald Judd). However, Fulton’s work is her own. She listens and borrows from all the people and things that have surrounded her throughout her nearly 40-year career to fathom a visual language that is uniquely distinct.
Lynn Fulton’s residency is part of our Artist Development programme and Studio A4, a residency programme offering an uncommon opportunity for artists to conduct research in a studio, receive long-term curatorial support, develop new work in Nottingham, and work amongst resident artists at Primary.
Artist Biography:
Lynn Fulton has exhibited extensively in this country and abroad. She studied BA (Hons) at Bath Academy of Art 1984-87, and after some time involved in artist-led organisations in Manchester and London, went on to study at The Slade for the sculpture MFA, which she completed in 1997. She was awarded a Boise travel scholarship in 1999 and spent three months in New York; some of this work was exhibited at Pierogi 2000 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Lynn has participated in Art OMI, Upstate New York, Braziers and Shave Farm artist residencies. She has shown in Surround with Nadine De Koenigswater, Gasworks, London (1995); The Whitechapel Open, London (1996), OPEM 3, The Collection, Lincoln (2014); In Miniature Small Collections, Nottingham Contemporary (2015); Shed, Mrs Rick’s, Primary (2015); Creekside Open, APT London 2019 (prizewinner); Yellow Moving Edge, with Sophie Mackfall, One Thoresby Street (2019), Royal Academy Summer Show, London (2021) and the Exeter open (2024). She was awarded an Abbey fellowship at the British School at Rome 2023/24.