The art of Donna Huddleston (b. 1970, Belfast, Northern Ireland) draws on a range of influences that span the worlds of film, theatre, literature, design and the visual arts.
Collapsing the boundaries between life and theatre, Huddleston’s drawings marry ritualistic narrative with an unpretentious medium. Her dramatic tableaux and cryptic pencil studies combine the austerity of technical drawing with a tonally resonant palette. Her media includes Caran d’ache colour pencil, metal-point, watercolour and graphite. The evocation of memory through texture is the formalist ambition of Huddleston’s works on paper.
Her alternately stark and theatrical compositions include objects made in various media that combine sculptural presence with functionality and set design.
Rich with incident and gesture, Huddleston’s drawings and objects nuance sinister presence with ambiguous comedy. Scissors, an empty but self-replicating room, a line of dancing cowgirls, a gargantuan papier-mâché shell beached on soap, a deranged actress with the bearing of a Tudor duchess – the theatrical world depicted in Huddleston’s work is a tense and emotionally volatile place.
Although born in Belfast, Huddleston grew up in Australia, where she studied at the National School of Art in Sydney and later graduated with a Bachelor of Theatre Design from the National Institute of Dramatic Arts. This led to an early career in film and theatre. Her experiences in this field precipitated a preoccupation with the ephemerality of set design and performance, evident in her works’ careful staging.
In Conversation: Jennifer Higgie and Donna Huddleston
Threshold is a group exhibition that traverses the solace of ritual and the continued impact of spiritualism in contemporary art and feminism. Featuring work by Angela Bulloch, Rachel Howard, Donna Huddleston, Josephine Meckseper, France-Lise McGurn, Paulina Olowska, Mai-Thu Perret and Clare Woods, Threshold brings together new and exciting perspectives which are compounded in the work of Donna Huddleston who’s drawing Brighter, 2021 adorns the cover of Higgie’s book.
18.00 - 18.45: Drinks and a late viewing of Threshold
19.00 – 19.45: Conversation between Jennifer Higgie and Donna Huddleston
For tickets please RSVP via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/in-conversation-jennifer-higgie-and-donna-huddleston-tickets-528376005857
Donna Huddleston in Conversation with Katy Hessel
Join us for a talk with artist Donna Huddleston and Katy Hessel, Art Historian, Curator and Founder of The Great Women Artists, on Wednestay 9 February at 6:30pm in our London gallery.
Donna Huddleston, Dorota Jurczak
With new editions by Donna Huddleston (b. 1970, Belfast, lives in London) and Dorota Jurczak (b. 1978, Warsaw, lives in Brussels), Province are introducing two artists whose works often seem to exceed boundaries, adding theatrical, literary and cinematic aspects to their art, for example.
Drawing Biennial 2021
Featuring new and recent works on paper by leading international artists, the Biennial showcases every imaginable technique and represents artists from a range of generations, backgrounds, and heritages.