Culture Now: Jess Flood-Paddock

For this lunchtime talk artists Jess Flood-Paddock and Nicolas Deshayes are in conversation to discuss their respective practices.

Jess Flood-Paddock is an artist who lives and works in London. Rooted in sculpture and the studio, Flood-Paddock’s work (which also employs photography, video and scenic painting) takes the large Foyles-type independent bookshop as a setting or point of view. This axis of context and content aims to generate sculpture informed by literature, antiquity, psychotherapy, and the figure of the bookseller, whose distracted service manner seems to reveal dreams of being something or somewhere else. Recent UK solo exhibitions have included Mindless, Mindless at Tate Britain (Art Now), Gangsta’s Paradise at the Hayward Gallery Project Space, Island, A Regime, video commission from Frieze Foundation for Channel 4 and Britain Creates a collaboration with fashion designer Jonathan Saunders for the British Fashion Council as part of the London 2012 Festival, Victoria and Albert Museum.

Nicolas Deshayes is a French-born artist who lives and works in London. He graduated from the MA Sculpture programme at the Royal College of Art in 2009 and the BA Fine Art course at Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2005. Working primarily with sculpture, Deshayes’ work dwells on the relationship between the natural and industrial worlds, by using man-made materials to create organic shapes and surfaces. Recent solo and two person exhibitions include Snails, Brand New Gallery, Milan, 2013; Browns in Full Colour, Jonathan Viner, London, 2012; Vanille with George Henry Longly, Galerie Valentin, Paris, 2012 and A Killer Whale Breaching in Soft Focus with Ed Atkins, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow. In 2013 he was featured in group exhibitions including Carl Freedman Gallery, London; David Roberts Art Foundation, London; Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York; James Fuentes, New York; Saatchi Gallery, London.