INTRODUCTION

Louise Giblin (1963-) is a Member of the Royal Society of Sculptors. She grew up on the Isle of Wight and lives and works on the Kent/East Sussex border, UK. Her work is exhibited and collected internationally.

In 2017 she was the artist invited to represent UK in the G7 of Art, Italy, and was awarded the Lorenzo Il Magnifico Gold, 1st place for Sculpture by the International Jury at the Florence Biennale XI. In April 2018, she received an ATIM International Masters Award for Contemporary Art at the Museum of Art and Design New York.

She studied Art and Design Foundation at Portsmouth, 3 years' 3D Design and BA Honours Sculpture at Brighton, where her tutors were Antony Gormley and Peter Randall-Page, and a further 4 years Master of Arts in History and Theory of Contemporary Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design, London.

Louise Giblin is predominantly known for life casting - covering Olympians, famous people, war veterans, models and private clients with plaster or alternative media. She produces a clay three-dimensional copy of the person's form that she uses like a blank canvas on which to create the model's narrative imagery. She is not interested in physical portraiture so much as capturing the achievements, experiences and passions that people often project to protect their personal selves from scrutiny: she describes this as their 'armour'. Dr Melanie Zefferino, Curator, G7 of Art, Italy and Florence Biennale 2017 wrote of her work:

‘Mastery and a superb sense of form lie behind playing with mass and void while bringing symbolic signs of myth, history, or experience on the bronze ‘skin’ of her sculptures, which have become more and more sensuous. Body casting is only the starting point of the creative process, at the end of which the cast turns out to be the remnant of a ‘physical bridge’ between reality and imagination, matter and spirit.’ 

Louise Giblin also works in other sculptural media and produces smaller or larger than life size figures and heads for interior and exterior display. More recently she has been commissioned to undertake sea related forms. She has exhibited, in the UK and overseas, as a draughtsman. Her drawings are usually from observation, comparatively small, complex and overlap like the surface design on her sculptures.