Tabatha Andrews
Associate Lecturer
Tabatha Andrews makes sculpture and installation that visualises memory and the energy of sound, exploring how we communicate. She often works collaboratively with composers, scientists or community groups, creating immersive experiences that heighten sensory awareness.
Among Remote Lost Objects (2015) was an exploration of vocal resonance and matter, involving a sound-deadening chamber made of recycled wool felt, blind opera singer Victoria Oruwari and composer John Matthias. The Dispensary, a ‘haptic cabinet of curiosities’ containing tactile and sonic objects, was created for dementia patients at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital with the woodturners of Devon and Cornwall (2016). This work explored craft, play, memory loss and language acquisition, winning the Better Build for Healthcare Award in 2017.
Her most recent projects have investigated listening and the generation of sculptural ‘scores’. In 2019, she collaborated with composer Charlotte Harding on Antiphon, a live vocal work exploring call and response and the inner ear for the stairwell of Science Gallery London. Stillpoint (2019), a performance for one blindfold person at a time, was made with neurobiologist Andrea Streit and choreographer Katrina Brown. A syntax of ‘sound objects’ were sculpted in an uncertain space, exploring where ‘the eye of the ear’ lies.
Andrews studied at Glasgow School of Art, Slade School of Art and the Skowhegan School of Art, Maine. She was Artist in Residence at Gloucester Cathedral in 2002-3, making works with the cathedral community, and has completed commissions for the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trust, the Whipple Museum of Science in Cambridge, the Monument to the Fire of London, Plymouth Art Weekender and many other venues. She is included in the book '50 Women Sculptors' published by Aurora Metro Press (2020).
