Esther Adesigbin United Kingdom

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I am artist working primarily in the medium glass, with 25 years experience as an art educator. My work expresses thoughts around identity and humanity through changing the surface of glass and paper. I am an art educator for the October Gallery and also facilitate art workshops in schools.

Glass is my primary material of creative expression, a medium I fell in love with after completing a degree in painting. Glass has the quality to produce a deeper optical experience, and create space ‘beyond' the surface of an art work. I investigate and alter sheet glass using printing, sand blasting, and slumping techniques.

A recurrent theme in my work is looking beyond the ‘seen’. My early work in glass and paper used continuous, repeating lines of sandblasted handwritten text, to create abstract filigrees of words. The movement and empty space in the work generates an intangible visual journey.

My aim is to explore a shifting experience of selfhood; being of dual heritage can mean perceptions of your ‘colour’ and ‘identity’ change depending on the social context you are in. I use my work to reflect on these changing states of being.

As an artist and art educator, I believe in the importance of exploring the physical aspects of a material as a point of departure for making art.

My education work with the October Gallery, and increasing knowledge of the international artists they exhibit, has strengthened my belief that all materials are art materials. And I rest in the space between applied art, crafts, and fine art practice.

My current work is deliberately grounded in drawings made from the spiritual art of Ife and Benin.

The engraved gold leaf heritage portraits represent an aspect of Black History.

This body of work addresses the deep colonial roots of ‘unconscious' bias towards people of African heritage, and is an attempt to communicate ideas around identity and humanity.