Sophie Smallhorn

Sophie Smallhorn was born in Hertfordshire in 1971. She trained at the University of Brighton (1991-94), graduating with a BA in Furniture - wood, metal, plastics and ceramics. Her lack of a fine-art training has not hindered her career as a sculptor. She had in fact started to make wall-mounted compositions in coloured off-cuts gleaned from making furniture. These took over her practice and her chosen modus operandi, that of the visual artist. In her work Smallhorn explores colour, volume and proportion. The forms of her wall works are small, simple, clean and geometric. Geometry and saturated colour are centre stage in her compositions, combined and contrasted depending on her intuitive sense of play. There is no theory, science or system in her approach. Texture is not admitted - the chance element of light and the controlled juxtaposition of form, volume, weight and colour are all she requires to make these complex scenarios that are journeys for the eye and mind.

Throughout the 1990s Smallhorn has exhibited regularly in solo exhibitions and in some group shows, both in London and abroad. Her first overseas exhibition was at Andrea Leenarts, Cologne, in 1998. This was followed in 1999 by her first large-scale outdoor work, an installation at the Aoyama headquarters of Comme des Garçons, in Tokyo. A solo exhibition at Colette, Paris, in 1999 was followed by further solo shows in London and Lyons. She is also participating in Painting Degree Zero, an exhibition touring museums in the United States in 2000-2001, in which she is the sole British artist. Smallhorn has undertaken a number of public art commissions, including the Arts for Health project at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London, 1994-95 and again in 1998. In 1995 she devised the colour and layout for Cearns and Brown's new offices in Runcorn in collaboration with the architects of Urban Salon. Smallhorn made an installation of coloured flags and objects for the reopening of Somerset House in The Strand, London, in summer 2000.