Emily Joy United Kingdom

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Emily Joy (UK, 1982) is a socially and environmentally engaged artist making sculpture, installation, and performative work. Emily is also a ceramic sculpture tutor and facilitates public creative projects as half of creative partnership ‘Periscope’. Currently exploring Swiss glacial melt and associated ecological and social impacts, her practice centres around communication, empathy and ecology.

Emily Joy (UK, 1982) is a socially and environmentally engaged artist making sculpture, installation, and performative work. Emily is also a ceramic sculpture tutor and facilitates public creative projects in her role as half of creative partnership ‘Periscope’.

Currently exploring Swiss glacial melt and the associated ecological and social impacts, her practice is centred around communication, empathy, and environmental concerns. Her work focuses on two interconnected drives: Material engagement (interactions with common/earthen materials including clay and drawing on paper) and theoretical research (exploring commonalities and shared viewpoints). Emily’s practice explores personal and ecological loss and restoration, human/other than human empathy, land-based nostalgia spanning countries and cultures, and the opening of personal narratives through non-hierarchical participatory works. Emily has recently completed a 12-month Arts Council funded period of research ‘Land, Earth, Empathy’, working with mentors Dr Elizabeth Hodson (anthropologist, GSA, and KFI project, Aberdeen), Dougald Hine (culturemaker, Dark Mountain Project co-founder) and Jürg Alean (glaciologist and geologist). As well as collaborating with artists and researchers, she has programmed events with speakers including author Brian Dillon, philosopher Mark Currie and activist Isabelle Fremeaux. She was artist in residence at ecological research centre Mustarinda in Finland in 2018, artist in residence at Loughborough University 2019 and at the Hardwick Gallery, University of Gloucestershire in 2020. In 2023 Emily was part of the British Council funded ‘Restorying a Living Landscape’ project, learning from Southern Hemisphere artists to develop a better understanding of artists’ roles in ecological resilience and decolonising practices. Emily is currently part of ‘Geomorph’ artists group, exploring material-based narratives of land, care, and language.