NEW BLOOD ART EMERGING ART PRIZE

Sophie Lloyd graduated in 2023 from her BA at City and Guilds of London. Her primary medium is sculpture, in which she manipulates sugar, particularly fondant icing, to explore how we consume and how we are consumed in turn. Her works resemble stained glass windows, with the lead caming holding the pieces together. Instead of being large and regal, they are small in size and reference fairground caricatures and renaissance sugar sculptures. They represent temporality and the calculated self that is portrayed in entertainment, often fuelled by a great instinctive hunger derived from consumerism. Lloyd creates pieces that are tactile and bodily and seem to be aware of their own deterioration but express a desire for more. 

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Artist Statement

The Live Show’ and ‘The Live Show: on demand’ is an ongoing piece much like a series of dramas which changes as characters rise and fall. 

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My work is about things we consume and how they consume us. The sculptures with their shoddy facade of stained-glass references fairground scams, characters of entertainment, and sugar sculptures of renaissance banquets. As a crowd of sugar sculptures, they line up, mouths open, awaiting their final blow while the dramatics of degrading sugar plays out. Together the figures portray the temporality within an algorithmic self whose reality is set in entertainment. Their façades are tinged with an authentic body that sees their own predicament; the desire to have more even when they are full and their subsequent deterioration. The work critiques the controlling grip of consumerism whilst exploring the tipping willingness of the consumer to let it take hold.