A solo exhibition of work by Sophie Gough researched and developed whilst an artist in residence in Kyoto,Japan for two months.
This exhibition gathers works made through slow processes of walking, observing, assembling, and reassembling. Across drawings, sculptural fragments, and spatial installations, there’s a recurring concern with how memory enters form—not as narrative, but as residue, rhythm, return.
Many of the works begin with movement: walking routes through Kyoto’s grid, familiar buildings passed daily, bamboo collected from forests at the edge of the city. But what’s shown here is not that movement itself—it’s what remains after. These are surfaces that hold what was felt, pressed, interrupted. Still, not empty.
Some works echo architectural systems—tatami mats, tiled facades, walls patched with tape—structures designed to organise space, or to quietly absorb disruption. Others explore fragmentation more directly: cast bamboo pieces, torn sketchbook pages, or soft grids reassembled through provisional joins. In each, there's a sense of revision, of encountering the same material or form again—but differently.
Stillness, here, is not absence. It’s a state of tension. A form of holding, of waiting, of almost—but not quite—alignment. What lives on the other side of stillness is not resolution, but attention.
The repetition of forms throughout the exhibition suggests a transformation. This reflects a broader interest in identity as something fluid and cyclical, shaped by experience and relation rather than stability. Positioned between the bodily, the architectural, and the geological, the forms resist categorisation. The viewer is invited to inhabit this in-between space—somewhere between isolation and immersion—where knowledge is provisional, and memory, like the work itself, is always in the process of becoming.
For available works from this show email the artist at s.nicola.gough@gmail.com
This exhibition gathers works made through slow processes of walking, observing, assembling, and reassembling. Across drawings, sculptural fragments, and spatial installations, there’s a recurring concern with how memory enters form—not as narrative, but as residue, rhythm, return.
Many of the works begin with movement: walking routes through Kyoto’s grid, familiar buildings passed daily, bamboo collected from forests at the edge of the city. But what’s shown here is not that movement itself—it’s what remains after. These are surfaces that hold what was felt, pressed, interrupted. Still, not empty.
Some works echo architectural systems—tatami mats, tiled facades, walls patched with tape—structures designed to organise space, or to quietly absorb disruption. Others explore fragmentation more directly: cast bamboo pieces, torn sketchbook pages, or soft grids reassembled through provisional joins. In each, there's a sense of revision, of encountering the same material or form again—but differently.
Stillness, here, is not absence. It’s a state of tension. A form of holding, of waiting, of almost—but not quite—alignment. What lives on the other side of stillness is not resolution, but attention.
The repetition of forms throughout the exhibition suggests a transformation. This reflects a broader interest in identity as something fluid and cyclical, shaped by experience and relation rather than stability. Positioned between the bodily, the architectural, and the geological, the forms resist categorisation. The viewer is invited to inhabit this in-between space—somewhere between isolation and immersion—where knowledge is provisional, and memory, like the work itself, is always in the process of becoming.
For available works from this show email the artist at s.nicola.gough@gmail.com