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The core of British artist Daisy Collingridges work is an exploration and celebration of the human form, working across sculpture, photography and performance, she delves into its anatomical properties with exaggerated flesh and limbs, harnessing a tactile and haptic quality of softness and colour. 

It is this fascination with how we are all composed internally of things that we have no understanding or concept of, that intrigues Collingridge. Her work is a physical rendering of those things invisible and internal, making them external and tangible. Growing up with parents who were medical meant the body was something quite matter of fact and not to be shied away from, this was followed by a formative experience that awoke her curiosity further at the historic exhibition Body Worlds by Dr. Gunther von Hagens, of real anatomical bodies, which she saw as a child in London in 2002. Similarly through the realms of public sculpture with Damien Hirst’s giant painted bronze anatomical figure of the body, Hymn (1999-2005).

Her own human forms are made from hand-dyed jersey, the fabrics separated into various hues of pink, ochre, yellow, and orange. Then they are quilted and stitched to create sinews and bodily shapes. “I essentially push this technique, where I free-machine and quilt sandwiched layers of fabric to the extreme, so it is no longer recognisable as quilting. Each layered section mimics the line of muscles and flesh. It’s a way of sculpting with soft cloth; layering and stitch give the sculpture its rigidity and structure.” They are genderless characters, emphasising how universal we all are on the inside. The technique of quilting also evokes storytelling and narrative. For Collingridge her characters are emotive and endearing, here she is inviting us to become lost in their world of her creation, rather than extracting them to join us in ours.