About

Jo Clements is a multi-disciplinary visual artist working between studios in Manchester, UK and Donegal, Ireland, interested in intersections of materiality and cognitive science and how complex artworks might activate different neural pathways and cognitive flexibility. Hugely influenced by speculative fiction, her images and sculptures of brains reimagined as plant like structures living outside of a human shell, have become an obsessive motif in her most recent work.

Research is a constant and important part of her practice and includes archival investigations into medical and botanical imagery, neuroscientific developments and histories. She often draws upon her training as a couture milliner using those particularly unique skills and knowledge of materials, to produce surreal sculptures that use incongruous combinations of materials such as 3d printing, liquid plastic, copper and textiles. 

She holds a Fine Art practice-based PhD and her research into artists working with regional film archives has been widely shared by those archives at conferences, film presentations and in teaching syllabuses worldwide. Her extensive back catalogue of film work reflects that research, and archival films and imagery remain an enduring presence in her art.  

She was the overall winner of the Greater Manchester Arts Prize in 2018, is the host of The Grateful Web podcast (available on ACAST, SPOTIFY and Apple podcasts) and works nationally and internationally to support artists and arts professionals through specialist coaching. For information and enquiries about her coaching practice click HERE