Clio Lloyd -Jacob

Here is Strange Loop, my work in Give and Take, this Monday 18 May at Judge Business School. This show explores how we attribute and express value, and how our patterns of exchange affect us. 15 artists and 20 works, it will be our own moving, challenging response to complex pushes and pulls. Huge gratitude to all those who are contributing to it, and all those who have helped me along the way. Building movable temporary walls for this, guided by the wonderful @theloft.life , has tested every muscle and fibre of resolve, and led me to the incredibly kind Damon. Seeing me loading 13 four metre lengths of wood onto my bike, he made a large detour in his van to drop them to me . A beautiful moment of recognising limits and need, and receiving a perfect gift.#giveandtake #contemporaryceramics #cambridgeexhibition #pipework #knot

What is valued, and what cannot be given a price? Grateful to be curating and sharing Give and Take a one day exhibition on exchange and value. Monday 18 May 2026, 9:30 am -5:30 pm @judge_business_school The show runs alongside the Cambridge Cultural Finance Forum, and offers an external perspective, proposing further ways to consider the place of creativity, how it is shared, and intersections with finance. Very grateful to have a wealth of ideas and works from: @mujtaba_asif @optimisticfilmandart @emanuela_cusin @zahramansoors @mansi.shouche.art @nooralichagani @shamsquratulain @woollerrachel @we.like.it_wild @Iditelianathan @sara.paynter @cliolloydjacob @theloft.life @sarahwoodworld @drew.agm33 #Redell Olsen #Jonny Aldous #Andrew James Please join us if you are nearby. Many thanks to the organisers @zahramansoors and @lorilorilori607 for inviting us. #value #alternativevisions #exchange #cambridgeexhibition #giveandtake

Huge thanks to my son for taking me to this place full of interesting pipes. Crossness Pumping Station, once a life saver for Londoners facing repeated Cholera outbreaks, now a community of engineering enthusiasts. Built following the"Great Stink" of 1858, after three successive Cholera epidemics had killed more than 25,000 people, this project has touches of humour amid its serious purposes. Images 14 &19 show pillars decorated with figs to encourage the digestive flow, and the white flowers were used to prevent diarrhoea...with a 25 million gallon tank, flowing out under the thrust of four steam pumps each tide was essential to everyone's survival. A shipping disaster in 1878, where 450 drowned asphyxiated from the fumes during a collision in the Thames, focused the government on the danger of pumping raw sewage into the river, and led to the use of "sludge boats" to carry settled contents out to sea. This practice continued until the 1990s, but has been replaced with thorough processing. The rhythmic swoosh and thump of a beam engine larger than a bus was a hypnotic way to meditate on experiences of industrial power, the separation of our wastes from our living environments, and our changing relationships with rivers and the sea. Staffed by all sorts of people, open to sharing their thoughts....thank you. #crossnesspumpingstation #sewagesystems #bazalgette #wastemanagement #pipework

@nooralichagani and I are so grateful to @gardinermuseum for the opportunity to develop Grid City. This work is born from the collaborative piece, Existing to be Removed, commissioned for Award @british_ceramics_biennial last Summer. Reusing the tower that centred that installation, we are reframing it for their International Ceramics Art Fair, themed around urban space, shelter, and the commons. ICAF opens 28 May in Toronto, Preparing the work for installation in a new way and by others at a huge distance has drawn on hidden engineering skills! These are a few moments from the process. The Jarokha ( balcony) needed dowel screws, many thanks to the expertise of former Mackay's staff (now Gripfixings Cambridge), for understanding what I needed. Noor invented a lightweight way to fill a pipe end for hanging cleats...adding wood over glued foam for a strong enough surface to screw into. Exciting to revisit and improve on the original tower body (here all wrapped up to protect it from damage in the process), and refining the roof surface with very fine sanding. All images are of tests, the final wall mounting of our work will be at a larger scale, to be shared in May. #ceramicbuildings #urbancommons #installation #contemporaryceramics #walldrawing

What unusual things we artists get to do... Sanding a ceramic pipe to ensure both ends sit flush to the wall, I found the rhythmic rasp quite soothing, like breathing alongside me. #sandingceramics #ceramicpipe

The great beauties of Spring at my beloved allotment. I have neglected her lately, but with our elderly dog, I had a day in paradise, refinding the strawberries deep in rye grass, and helping them find the sunlight. Hoping they will fruit in time to share at half term with the family of @nooralichagani and @shamsquratulain . The rebirth of life in this small piece of earth that I have loved and tended for over 10 years gives me hope amid horrific violence on a global level. Here people of many origins come together to grow, to work with the earth and each other. We share seeds, expertise, jokes, company and laughter. I am learning perseverance here, each year new blights, hungry creatures and unpredictable weather, each year gifts and the company of miniscule to very large creatures. Two wings left under a cherry tree speak of a hungry fox or cat that passed earlier. This place is a shared one, I am one of its less frequent visitors. #blossom #sprinf #allotment #sharing #growth

Some of the profound work by Henry Taylor, working in L.A. @museepicassoparis His compositions in paint and objects bring together deeply divided histories in the States, that I recognise from my years there as a child, but could not previously articulate. Drawing on the wealth of his humanity, and his lived connection with the suffering and oppression of black Americans, his works invite us into inner worlds. Full of love, loss, and life, these works opened new eyes in me, like reading Toni Morrison, and left me infinitely richer. Huge thanks to @janayton2 for informing me of the show. Apologies for awkward cropping. His titles are beautiful, I don't have all to hand, but 7 is I am a Man, 2012, portrait of musician Shawn Corey Carter, Jay Z 8 "You Really Gonna Pay Me to Sit?" Said the Panhandler 12 Paragraph and Caption, 2012, incredibly elegant 14 Cora, Cornbread was one of my favourites a tribute to his mother, Cora, so essential, and something I recognise, as the mother of a young man. If you have the luck to be in Paris in this season, do go. Your sensitivity to structural violence, and its multi-generational influence, will grow. This is crucial, healing work now, as ever. And there is so much humour. Also really interesting to see the work in this museum, alongside Taylor's reworking of Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon. Apologies, no photo. #henrytaylor #contemporarypainting #portraitofamerica #structuralviolence #parisexhibition

Join us this Thursday, 9 April 2026, for a special evening with Alexandra Baraitser as part of 'Line of Beauty' at The Exhibitionist Hotel. Alexandra will be in conversation with artist and curator Clio Lloyd-Jacob, offering insight into her practice, influences and the ideas behind her gorgeous work. Based between Cambridge and London, Baraitser is known for her vivid paintings of everyday interiors and architectural forms, works that transform chairs, lamps, stations, offices and domestic spaces into colourful, psychologically charged compositions balanced between observation and abstraction. Drinks from 6pm Talk at 7pm The Exhibitionist Hotel, 8-10 Queensberry Place, London SW7 2EA RSVP: [email protected] @alexandrabaraitser @cliolloydjacob @exhibitionist_hotel Artist photo @zimpleplus.studio #YoungMastersArtPrize #LineOfBeauty #AlexandraBaraitser #TheExhibitionistHotel #SouthKensington

This odd work, To and Fro, is through the first round selection at Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Strange what pipes can do...glad its knotted thoughts appeal to a few others too. There's something here about the ins and outs of air and material in our lives. Thanks to @ryanjgander and his team @royalacademyarts #summerexhibition #chimney #pipes #sculpture #breathing

What forces lurk in the shadows this sunny day? Preparing for a performance this Sunday, some old friends have come out to play. #shadowplay #angel #hidden #puppet #performance

Many thanks to @cjfaraday for a curator’s tour of Tudor Contemporary @heong_gallery and to @zehrajumabhoy for initiating it. So interesting, I had to go twice. Several contemporary artworks address the impacts of power on the holder, others relate to Elizabeth 1st as performer of a role. Quoted in Helen Hackett’s catalogue essay, Elizabeth describes being a spectacle “We princes, I tell you, are set on stages, in the sight and view of all the world duly observed.” Her body, wealth, feelings and ongoing influences in our times are dissected and reflected upon in interesting ways, and contextualised by tudor work. Some of my favourite works: 1&2 @matcollishawstudio “Mask of Youth”, animatronic mask of Elizabeth 1 at 55 years 3&4 @lindersterling excerpt from The Bower of Bliss, 2018 5-9 @thesinghtwins_art Rule Britannia: Legacies of Exchange, 2018 Note the essential, topical name of their boat… 10. @chan_hyo_bae Existing IN COstume: Punishment Project, Anne Boleyn 11. @natasjakensmil Elizabeth 1, 2009 12. Early lift the flap anatomy book, Thomas Gemini, Compendious Totius Anatomie Delineator, 1559 13 @peter_brathwaite with Sam Baldock, John Blanke, form his Rediscovering Black Portraiture series, based on the first identifiable image of a black man in British art, in the 1511 Tournament Roll… (14) 15 @jane_partner from The Book as Body: Inwardness 16&17 serenakorda two works form The Jug Choir 18 original tudor Bellarmine pots that they derive from 19 Anonymous tudor portrait of Elizabeth 1 Visitors I spoke to each found something to fascinate them, and visceral responses. This is an exhibition of many parts and depths…to meet ours. Congratulations to Dr Christina Faraday, curator, also for the catalogue, looks like I will be seeking out her soon-to-be released book. #tudor #tutorcontemporary #Elizabeth1 #matcollishaw

Lovely to meet this new shadow puppet, getting ready to play in a fortnight with participants from Cambridge Creative Synergy. A couple of years ago, I joined two fabulous training sessions with @animatedtales on supporting storytelling through puppetry. I used it with joyous and riotous results @mk_gallery in their astonishing, generous "Art and Us" programme. I find I often turn towards performance, light and shadow, as the days get longer. Something time bound inside me emerging from hibernation? This Spring, I will be developing a Sufi story of search and inner change for this group. It is one I have been mulling over since artist Sylvie Duplan told it to me in 1995. It still resonates with my own seeking. Maybe there'll be ways to share it more broadly in due course.🤞🏻 #shadowpuppet #storytelling #groupwork #innerjourney #puppetry