Jacqueline Nicholls
Jacqueline Nicholls
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Lockdown Drawing 21/07/2020
Pencil on paper
42 x 29.7 cm
About this Work
The works presented here are part of an ongoing series that began in March during the lockdown of the global coronavirus pandemic. Feeling dislocated from her community and literally “out of touch”, Nicholls was inspired by theories around the neuroscience of literacy, which analyses how writing systems intersect in nature and how our brains use known patterns to form written languages. She considers these stick drawings as linguistic constructions of the natural world, strewn with potential alphabets. The pieces are simultaneously tangible and solid, and delicate and vulnerable. Their slender lines have a physicality due to the emphasis on the shadow. While shadows are often associated with the absence of light, these shadows show that these delicate lines can be held. The drawing is most intense at the point of contact between the object and the surface. The ground functions here as a meeting place, and a symbol of the contact our own bodies make with physical and imagined surfaces.
About Jacqueline Nicholls
Jacqueline Nicholls is a London-based artist. She gained her BA in Architecture from Leeds Metropolitan University, before completing an MA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins. Through her practice, Nicholls explores and visualises the invisible marks that are left on cultural identity. Her work bears a deep connection to postmemory, as well as wider explorations of Jewish heritage. From this standpoint, she explores themes of touch, power, embodied language, the affect of illegible traces, and the aura of absence. The work shifts between representation to abstraction as she considers the emotional potency of ambiguity. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and can be found in both public and private collections.
Jacqueline Nicholls’ work considers handwriting as a form of drawing. She sees it as a line drawn through internal thought, the body as mediator, and ultimately physical presence through language. This interest is informed by her Jewish heritage, a tradition that values scholarly wordplay and textual interpretations. Through handwriting, Nicholls grapples with the patriarchal, authoritative elements of these texts, taking them in hand as a feminist critique.
The artist uses a variety of craft-based techniques in her work, including embroidery, dressmaking, bookbinding, printmaking, painting, and animation. Across these mediums, she preoccupies herself with how physical materiality affects abstract thought. She deliberately chooses stereotypical feminine crafts, in order to investigate how art can appropriate and subvert patriarchal traditions. The creative tension between her feminism and her ethnic, religious identity has been a key component of her practice.
Education
2020 MA Fine Art (Distinction) Central Saint Martins 2020
1992 BA(hons) Degree in Architecture – Leeds Metropolitan University 1992
1997 Fine Art Foundation – Byam Shaw School of Art 1997
2001 Printmaking Techniques Diploma – London School of Printing 2001
1998 Anatomical Art and Medical Illustration,Medical Artists Association
Exhibitions
2020
London Grads Now, Saatchi Gallery - London
2019
Hollow Chambers, Crypt Gallery, London - group show
2017
Resistance - City Lore Gallery, New York - group show
Installation ‘Jerusalem Dreams’ part of the Balfour exhibit at the Jerusalem Biennale
2017
The Divine Female - The Jewish Museum, Vienna - group show
2016
The New Venice Haggadah - Jewish Museum, Venice - group show
2015
Sacrifice - Jewish Museum, London - group show
Blood - Jewish Museum, London - group show (and at The Polin Museum, Warsaw in 2017)
Evil: A Matter of Intent - HUC Museum, New York - group show
Women of the Book - Jerusalem Biennale - group show
Out Of Chaos: 100 Years of Ben Uri, Somerset House, London - group show
Male & Female: He Created Them? installation in collaboration with Idan Cohen Dance Co, Tel Aviv
Time, Text & Torah - JCC San Fransisco - solo show
2013
Tosefot: Women Drawing Talmud, Ein Harod Art Museum, Israel - show with Yonah Lavery Yisraeli
The Golden Ghetto, Venice, Italy - group show
The Jerusalem Biennale, Jerusalem, Israel - group show
The Seventh Day, Museum at HUC, New York - group show
2012
Jacqueline Nicholls: New Works, Laurie M. Tisch Gallery, JCC Manhattan, NYC, USA - solo show
Spectrum of Sexuality, Museum at HUC, New York - group show
Matronita: Jewish Feminist Art, Ein Harod Art Museum, Israel - group show
2011
The Ladies Guild Collection, Oval House Theatre Gallery, London - solo show
2011
Faith in the City, London - group show
2010
'Armour' exhibited at interfaith arts festival with the 3 Faith Forum, London - group show
A Stitch in Jewish Time: Provocative Textiles, HUC New York - group show
The Ladies Guild Collection, displayed at the JOFA conference, New York
Apocalypse: Masterpieces from the Ben Uri Collection, London - group show
2009
Artifice, Three Faith Forum, London - group show
2008
Schmatte Couture, Ben Uri Museum of Jewish Art, London - group show
2004
Red Thread Drawings, Red Gate Gallery, London - solo show
Presentations & Awards
2016
Embodied Things - post-gradate seminar in Cambridge University
Faith & Fashion: Dress, Politics & Belonging Post-Brexit - London College of Fashion
2013
Graphic Medicine conference on medical narratives and comic books
2012
Finalist in Ben Uri’s International Jewish Artist of The Year
Best Interfaith Art Collaboration - Mica Gallery, London
Women and Clothing Symposium at JTS, New York, USA
Laydeez do Comics, London, UK