Emma Woffenden continues to explore the figure and the fragmented body in her latest sculpture series, ‘Falling Hard’.

Using a variety of mixed materials including glass, jesmonite, polystyrene, clay and metal, Woffenden creates a discourse around the interconnectivity of the body as a physical and psychological site and the impact of what the body – whole or fragmentary – expresses. The influences of social structures and the dynamics of power relations on the individual imbue her sculpture with a palpable sense of internal conflict.

Interpretation of contradictions and opposites is a pervasive theme in this new series of work; how internal emotional experience is expressed through the external action of the figure, the aesthetics of symmetry and asymmetry, the erotic and fetishistic power of religious sculpture, culminating in the unsettling yet exquisite appearance of her sculptures. The dualities Woffenden confronts in the ‘Hammer’ hybrid object - corporeal and material, playful and brutal, fragile and resilient - hint at violence both real and symbolic.

Woffenden’s uncanny forms trespass upon the viewer’s imagination, casting an oblique light on the human condition.

Text by Siobhan Feeney (2014)