camilla bliss

London based artist Camilla Bliss graduated in 2021 from the Royal College of Art.

Research into symbols and motives from ancient narratives, specifically mythologies, form the core of her practice. Her work often diffuses the boundaries between life and death giving an ulterior perspective that death does not need to follow the dark garments of tradition, or the light veil of the living, but in fact these subjects are very much intertwined and open to the viewers interpretation.

Within the work the element of ‘play’ is very important to her, as her work evolves around imagination and experimentation, firstly drawing out as much as she can through her mental space, but then working with her hands to find a kind of dialogue between the materials and the processes. Playful decisions around colour, material and form allow Bliss to make specific cultural connections, whilst taking the viewer on a personal and potentially ambiguous journey. She is an artist who primarily works in sculpture, her work places importance on handmade processes and qualities. In this way, She utilises a wide range of materials such as ceramics, metalwork, glass, wood, textiles and 3D printing. Bliss does this through the use of a personal language of symbols.

Camilla tends to make things quite tactile as she wants people to get closer into the works and 

to touch them, she feels that bringing them closer to really noticing the material and to have that sensory experience or awareness of your surroundings, helps ground the viewer enhancing the tension between them and the ceramics ‘It’s like this grounding material that you can really get lost in but the same time your imagination moves away so you’re drifting between states. I think that’s important within the work’. Camilla’s artworks are sensory as well as tactile, falling into a dream space where things shift or where there’s a sense of transformation and where there’s potential for something. Which she hopes will come through.

There is a cyclical element with the work always revolving, intertwined with how we feel about things in our modern world. She likes to create attention between two elements. 

At the moment we are being almost forced to communicate so much to the ‘digital’ it feels like thinking of a language or how we use language, not necessarily verbal but with sensory touch.     This is one aspect of her work that she feels is important -  to enter into relation with a piece. Technology, specifically phones draw you into other worlds or port holes and the ‘Sirens’, which play an important role in her narrative, are known to be either historically mermaids or both harpies (half woman half bird) reflect the destructive and distracting nature of modern communication. She likes the way that destruction as a word is not necessarily seen as something that’s negative but positive in the form of creation and how you put things together. 

PNEUMA 

These are a set of artworks especially commissioned for the Some Roses and their Phantoms exhibition for Darle and the Bear in London and sits as a different entity yet bound together like a constellation. Dream images appear like phantoms as we look through the skin of the glass. The refractions of light on the surrounding surface shift between a strong blaze of colour to a diffused glow barely noticeable as time passes. 

The work expands beyond it’s physical body as light stretches across its surrounding surface. Looking into a transcendent state of mind, the works explore our psyche in flux - moving between altered states of consciousness. 

Taking inspiration from Dorothea Tanning’s surrealist painting ‘Some roses and Their Phantoms’ where animal-like creatures emerge from the domestic still-life of a crumpled tablecloth Bliss focuses our attention on the shifting nature of the domestic and how our minds can enter alternate worlds as we shift in and out of focus between reality and our subconscious. The everyday holds a ‘quiet mystery’ mutating constantly often passed unnoticed - like air in motion. 

THE GUARDIAN  RANGE

The Guardian collection originated from ‘Guardians of Bliss’ whjich is a green glazed ceramic urn with many relief faces on the outside and a tuft of horsehair coming out of a multifaceted head on the lid. ‘Bliss’ not only refers to the artist’s mother’s maiden name, but also to a state of perfect happiness or euphoria. This piece stands in limbo as a relic to the dead, but also to the living, as guardians of bliss can refer to both the artists deceased mother: Helen Bliss, and to the wellbeing of those alive. Starting as protective elements, these structures as she sees them are supposedly a protective kind of element, they’re not going to harm you.

In addition, the piece also references an earlier work by the artist titled ‘Et In Arcadia Ego’; another memorial to her mother, which stands in an indefinable space of anonymity, as the title implies ‘Even in Arcadia there is death’. Camilla Bliss diffuses the boundaries between life and death giving an ulterior perspective that death does not need to follow the dark garments of tradition, or the light veil of the living, but in fact these subjects are very much intertwined and open to the viewers interpretation. 

Camilla' Bliss  -  Biography