Isabel Rock
about the artist
Like the artist herself, Isabel Rock's work is fun, quirky and brimming with life. The artist cleverly bridges the gulf between the sublime and the absurd; the jocular and the grotesque. Inspired in part by the nonsense literature of Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and Roald Dahl, and in part by her rural upbringing and theatrical imagination, Isabel’s careful craftsmanship brings about images that can amuse as easily as they can horrify. Her work centres around the vices of greed and lust; cheerful phallic symbols redress the balance of sexual politics. This is a parry/riposte to the abundance of female nudity in the media and her dissatisfaction with a society in which beauty and physical perfection are worshipped in preference to intellectual merit. Rabelais describes how if we can laugh at something it ceases to be so frightening. The absurdity and ridicule in her drawings investigate the relationship with the male and sexual desire, using distorted animals as a metaphor for human relationships to create a world inhabited by these lecherous slobbering beings, ever ready to consume or fornicate. Isabel develops these themes by the use of the grotesque and Carnivalesque.In 2013 Isabel was awarded a Fellowship from The Arts Foundation UK. A Graduate of the Royal College of Art, Isabel received her award from Anthony Gormley at a ceremony in London. Since January 2013 the young artist has not stood still exhibiting for the 5th time at the India Art Fair in Delhi, participating in Residencies in Senegal, Iceland, India and now working in Berlin. Rock has exhibited at the RA Summer Show in London and is due to have her first solo exhibition with the British Council in Delhi.
