Gemma Barr

Dog Dribble (2026) - Timed assemblage from salvaged objects from the street. Made in the runtime of an album by Getdown Services. @rcasculpture @royalcollegeofart

I am pleased to say that I was chosen as this year’s recipient of the Liu Shiming Art Foundation Bursary from this year’s MA Sculpture cohort.⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ I want to thank the Liu Shiming Art Foundation @lsmartfund for this award and the RCA Arts & Humanities academic staff for the nomination.⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ This one is for the working class artists out there putting in the hours and being authentic to their practice. I’m a firm believer that when you put in the work, good things come back to you.⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ @rcasculpture @royalcollegeofart @lsmartfund @jasparjosephlester @chantalfaust

[MA SCULPTURE 26’] Artist Spotlight Gemma Barr operates as a scavenger and forensic investigator, tracing the morbid afterlives of objects shaped by overconsumption. Her practice is rooted in a working class lineage and a lived proximity to waste. Informed by her father’s labour as a refuse collector, she views the debris of the street not as trash but as a site of dead labour and fractured narratives. This inherited perspective drives an aesthetics of emergency where the act of salvaging becomes a visceral and class conscious response to the climate crisis and the grotesque excesses of a throwaway culture. Her work functions as speculative fiction exploring the post apocalyptic potential of the landscape. Through timed assemblage exercises and material transitions, Barr documents the birth of plastiglomerates. These are hybrid geological structures where synthetic waste and natural matter have fused into a new and permanent crust. By experimenting with both raw scavenger assemblage and intensely coated skins, she petrifies the commodity into technofossils to create a visual record of what the land is becoming. Using a Gothic Marxist lens, Barr positions the fantasy of the commodity as a material condition produced by capitalism. Her assemblages do not offer escapism. Instead, they present a site for the body to reckon with the remnants of domestic utility and the collapse of the functional object. For Barr, the artist’s role is to act as a witness to the material aftermath. She turns what was once sold as a promise of stability back into a dense and fragmented reality that mirrors the toil of the worker and the synthetic geography of the modern world.

Gemma Barr works as a scavenger and assembler, tracing the morbid afterlives of objects shaped by overconsumption. She salvages materials from the street, waste sites, and unsellable items from charity shops, collecting not only discarded and broken objects, but the ghosts of the labour and stories attached to them. “By cutting, layering, and coating these domestic remnants, I petrify the commodity. The resulting forms resemble plastiglomerates: hybrid geological structures where the ‘dead’ debris of consumerism and the natural world have fused into a permanent, haunting geology. Through a Gothic Marxist lens, my practice uses the excesses of consumer culture to construct autonomous installation environments. I position fantasy not as an escape from capitalism, but as a material condition produced by it. While capitalism encourages consumption as a mode of escapism, these works offer a site for active navigation through the remnants of desire. What capitalism sells as fantasy, the work returns as an experience the body must reckon with.” Come see Gemma’s work @brixtonjamm Ticket link in bio x 10.04.26

‘BRAT’ (2026) Assemblage has been a natural implementation to my practice as I continue to scavenge unwanted objects. The ease with which I’ve been able to accumulate so much is disturbing. I’m looking for ways to fine tune my process so I can create intuitive works at a larger scale. My current constraint is carrying out an assemblage within the length of an album. I carried out five of these, with the last one shown was to Charli XCX - BRAT. I can see that with this mode of working, the faster the music, the better for me to put myself in flow state. (Album suggestions welcome) Objects found from the street, the river, bins, skips, abandoned retirement home, the school bins, unwanted donations from charity shops. @rcasculpture @royalcollegeofart #brat

Bounce (slang, Glaswegian)  /baʊn(t)s/  verb  to leave. to go somewhere else.    2025 felt like a year of bounce for me.   Leaving places and starting new.  The year ended with a work that, for me, closed a loop of bounce through its literal form.  A joyful exploration of collaboration and performance.    “My Body is a Bouncy Temple” (2025) Further details about the work and collaborators can be found at     @rcasculpture @royalcollegeofart   Photos by @sukie_kkang

TRASH ETIQUETTE I’ve been collecting discarded objects from different places over the past weeks. Things from skips, bins, charity shops where the managers were almost relieved for me to take their broken items, mudlarking at the riverside and whatever I find left behind on the street. Some of these finds are strange and memorable (including a multi page love letter (3) and @nyoung_jun toilet seat (4), others are completely ordinary, but all of them reveal how much material circulates quietly through daily life without being seen. Lately I’ve been looking at my own relationship to excess and materiality. Working with found objects has become both a method and a line of research. Each object brings its own history, emotion and quiet weight into the work. This shift has also made me almost too aware of my own consumption. I think twice about everything I buy, use or throw away. I’ve started collecting my own waste more deliberately and letting it sit next to the other discarded things I gather. It feels important that my own habits are part of the pile rather than something I analyse from a distance. Behind this is a wider curiosity about the different forms of consumerism we participate in, consciously or not. Overproduction, fast disposal, the aesthetics of waste and the strange afterlives of objects all sit under that umbrella. This project is becoming a physical manifestation of that research, built from the cast offs that usually disappear without notice. These materials are slowly entering the work. They are being assembled into a larger structure that holds traces of both personal and collective consumption. I’m still at the early stage but the pile is growing and the shape is beginning to form. More soon as the work develops. Photos by @nyoung_jun 📸

Epic F(l)ail Starting my master’s at @rcasculpture , I went straight into a project I’ve been thinking about for years. As it came together, I realised I’m kind of unlearning how I used to think about making- moving away from design habits and figuring out a new way to work. It feels like a bridge between what I’ve done before and what’s next. It’s been cathartic (and daunting) to stop treating everything as precious; to let things break, get messy, and just play again. It’s a good thing the camerawoman never dies. 🎥 @nyoung_jun

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes. It’s been one month since I moved to London and not long since I started my Masters in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art. Time already moves too fast. Little snippets of the past month in my new home. Here’s to making changes. @rcasculpture @royalcollegeofart #rca #royalcollegeofart

It was a pleasure to be interviewed in Architectural Digest @ad_magazine by @_nicolasmilon for his article Les Nouvelles Radicalités / The New Radicalities and to discuss my enjoyment of materiality.   I’m honored to be part of a discussion on radical craft alongside such a diverse group of craftspeople. it’s important that we continue pushing forward with experimental design/functional art and materiality in our industry alongside more traditional works.. without it, we risk losing our connection to the more fantastical elements of our lives.     “Souvent la radicalité vient de la matière elle-même qui est nouvelle et n’a pas encore été travaillée, cela donne des formes et des résultats forcément inhabituels.”    Featured alongside: @jeanbaptistedurand @williemorlon @niclaswolf_ @marcleschelier   #ArchitecturalDigest #RadicalDesign #FurnitureDesign #InteriorDesign #article

Ore – My geometric-geological work is starting to climb the walls.   #sculpture #geology #geometric #art #handcraft #stalactite

Ceramic - Hand-grown Crystal - Chrome.   A little handmade alien geology.   The mineral obsession continues.                #materialexperiment #sculpture #ceramic #chrome #aliengeology #crystals #minerals #geology