WIES ROETERDINK
BIO / CV
PROJECTS
EXHIBITIONS
Working across sculpture, printmaking and installation, I use my sensitivity to site and process to examine ephemeral traces within the built environment. I am interested in how the mediatisation of site-specific phenomena, such as the incidental light cast through apertures in architecture and the marks accumulated on surfaces over time, solidify to temporarily produce an essence of space.
One way this materialises in my practice is in large paper pulp casting of architectural features in places that hold a personal, cultural, or historical value. The casts become pseudo-palimpsests of a complex history of space. A dynamic interplay between memory and materiality, reveals the indexicality of traces: pointing towards different times, alterations, and interventions, while simultaneously redirecting attentions inwards, alluding to the sculptures own making. As such, the cast objects have an indexical relationship to reality; it is a direct impression of an object at a given moment in time, in effect, comparable to indexical objects like death masks or footprints. Wherein, the absent object’s presence is materialised, though inverted and otherwise changed, in the impressions of form fixed in these skinned artefacts.
In my eyes, the casting process compresses these many layers of the original structure's history, into a single, short-lived representation. As such, these cast forms require a nuanced negotiation of time; my conscious choice to use non-durable materials, paper and bioplastic, evidence the passage of time as they are inevitably vulnerable to change. These casts while serving as tangible manifestations of memory, are themselves susceptible to degradation and eventual obsolescence and, in this sense, embody the impermanence of material existence My works resist fixity, they evolve with time: pulp casts warp and tear, bioplastic cyanotypes gradually expose capturing the progression of light. The durational process of my cast traces of spaces deteriorating mimics the natural processes that transform real buildings into ruins.
Ultimately, my artistic practice engages a complex interplay between permanence and impermanence, solidity and fragility, and absence and presence. This emphasis on the temporal complexities of materials in flux starts to question the stability of foundations, and by extension the purported permanence of the institutions which rely on them.
CONTACT
EDUCATION
2024
2023
2020
2023
2020
B.A.
Foundation Diploma
Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, UK
Leith School of Art, Edinburgh, UK
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2018
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2018
Mapping () Beyond Sight
Give Us More (Please)
Postgraduate Showcase
Cost of Opportunity
Host
Silent Observer
Third Space: International
Festival
Everything Must Go
Test Drive
Weatherby’s Exhibition
Spring 24
The Queer Museum:
International Exhibition
The Queer Museum: Sexual Dissidence (in Art Today)
Departure Lounge
One Thing Leads To Another
To What End?
Big Little Show
Paper Stories
Alchemy of Objects
Open Studio
Making Mo(o)re
Aperture
Art Pilgrimage
Open Studio
Art Pilgrimage
End of Year Exhibition
IB Art
Floor 2, Algha Group Ltd, London
The Handbag Factory, ASC Gallery, London
Traingle Space, Chelsea College of Arts, London
Cookhouse Gallery, London
St Saviour’s Church, Pimlico, UK
Cookhouse Gallery, London
AVA, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Cookhouse Gallery, London
Triangle Space, London
Weatherby’s Private Bank, London
Cookhouse Gallery, London
Studio 18, Millbank Tower, London
ALG17, Chelsea College of Arts
Cookhouse Gallery, London
Cookhouse Gallery, London,
Cookhouse Gallery, London
Cookhouse Gallery, London
Central Saint Martins, London
H010, Central Saint Martins, London
Henry Moore Studios & Gardens, Hertfordshire
H010, Central Saint Martins, London
Hampstead Heath Park, London
H010, Central Saint Martins, London
Finsbury Park, London
Leith School of Art, online
D3, Dubai Design District, UAE
PUBLICATIONS / WRITING
2023
2021
2020
2021
2020
In Conversation With … Wies Roeterdink, A discussion between Rhona Sword and Wies Roeterdink for New Wave Press
Adjecter, Collaborative publication from Toby Christian’s Ergodic literature workshop
Artmag, Artwork featured on front cover (Issue 120), 3 July 2020
RESIDENCIES
2024
AWARDS
2024
2020
2018
2016
2020
2018
2016
Outstanding Work in Fine Art Prize, Leith School of Art, UK
The Michael Biggs Award for Excellence in the Visual Arts and Design, Jumeirah English Speaking School, UAE
The Suddaby Award for All Round Excellence, Jumeirah English Speaking School, UAE