Carol Wyss

Please describe yourself and your areas of interest.

I am a visual artist (MFA Slade UCL) working primarily with printmaking, drawing and photography to create the components for my art installations. In 2012 I won the inaugural John Ruskin Prize and am exhibiting regularly both in solo and in group exhibitions nationally and internationally. My work is a concerted search for the structure of things – I am taking existing structures apart and create new recognisable patterns. The human skeleton is the basic frame through which I examine the relationship of humans to their surroundings. Bones are essential in reconstructing who we are and where we come from. Through processes of dismantling, zooming in and reassembling, I search for new formations to explore how we understand human existence and question our impact on and synergy with the planet we currently inhabit.

Why did you become a Companion of the Guild?

The way Ruskin combined his scientific and his artistic mind and his refusal to be categorised reflects how I approach my art practice. I relate to Ruskin as someone who cared deeply about the environment. He was concerned by the havoc humans are causing to the natural environment and I find his conviction that we (humans) will never completely ‘master’ or 'decode’ nature reassuring.

Web link: www.carolwyss.net