Sioban Piercy
Piercy’s work invites us to reflect on the object we call ‘a book’. By utilizing processes of printing and traditional bookmaking in unconventional manners, she encourages us to look anew at what she considers a remarkable human creation. She proposes the book as a liminal space, where humble materials—ink, paper, and thread—are transformed into signifiers of meaning. She presents the book as a threshold, a place where a simple mark holds the potential to generate mental landscapes and architectures of the mind. Through her engagement with the book form, Piercy exposes its encoded values and contemplates the ways in which we construct meaning. Her work shows the book, not as a mere vessel for words, but as an active participant in our ongoing acts of interpretation and imagination.
She studied at the Royal College of Art, London and has received numerous awards including the International Print Triennial in Cracow, Poland; the Printmakers Council of Britain, London; British School at Rome scholarship. This year she was awarded the Shota Kotake Drawing prize at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin. Her work is in the collections of the Arts Council of Ireland; the V&A, London; the Instituto Nationale Per la Grafica, Rome; among others. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Printmakers (RE) and winner of the society’s residency at the Scuola di Grafica in Venice in 2019. She is a regular exhibitor in the Summer Show at the Royal Academy, London.
Piercy’s work invites us to reflect on the object we call ‘a book’. By utilizing processes of printing and traditional bookmaking in unconventional manners, she encourages us to look anew at what she considers a remarkable human creation. She proposes the book as a liminal space, where humble materials—ink, paper, and thread—are transformed into signifiers of meaning. She presents the book as a threshold, a place where a simple mark holds the potential to generate mental landscapes and architectures of the mind. Through her engagement with the book form, Piercy exposes its encoded values and contemplates the ways in which we construct meaning. Her work shows the book, not as a mere vessel for words, but as an active participant in our ongoing acts of interpretation and imagination.
She studied at the Royal College of Art, London and has received numerous awards including the International Print Triennial in Cracow, Poland; the Printmakers Council of Britain, London; British School at Rome scholarship. This year she was awarded the Shota Kotake Drawing prize at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin. Her work is in the collections of the Arts Council of Ireland; the V&A, London; the Instituto Nationale Per la Grafica, Rome; among others. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Printmakers (RE) and winner of the society’s residency at the Scuola di Grafica in Venice in 2019. She is a regular exhibitor in the Summer Show at the Royal Academy, London.