Lesley Hilling is an established artist living and working in Brixton, south London. She received several prizes through the years including the Aesthetica Art Prize in 2015 and 2017, and more recently the Nathan David Award for Sculpture in 2021.

Working predominantly with found and recycled materials, where parts of old furniture and pianos come alive again in intricate constructions built up not just from wood, but pieces of glass, camera lenses, and vintage photographs; the sort of memory-laden matter that has accumulated in an abandoned attic is appropriated by Hilling who carefully selects, paints and assembles the numerous pieces into large complex compositions. Her delicate craftsmanship seems to heighten a longing for a world lost.

Hilling’s acutely detailed wooden sculptures serve as archives of the endless memories the objects, that they were once part of, contain. Nostalgia and longing for times past are the driving forces behind Lesley’s art practice. To build the structures she focuses on the grid, which is at the core of each of her works, she speaks of modern-day capitalist society as a system that keeps societies in place, economically, emotionally and socially.