Bea Underwood

My practice centres around first gathering materials and in turn responding to them with object-making. I make soft-but-structured stuffed sculptures that attempt to balance incongruous elements: hybrid forms that confuse perceptions of use.

I collect used domestic fabrics, exploring their textural values and their potential for holding shape. The forms themselves reflect my preoccupation with certain kinds of functional negative space: pockets, cups, boxes – simple signifiers of containment, or the potential for it.

I am concerned with the relationship between ambiguity and tactility; what triggers a haptic response to the unknown? With a soft familiar skin of everyday fabric, the works speak of furniture, body and storage in their strange reincarnation.