“My recent practice has been based on reimagining feminine desire past and present, with clothing, particularly dresses, being a central and reoccurring theme. I use construction and household materials to emphasise the relationships clothes have with structure, and ultimately, dereliction.”
Rosie Galloway-Smith is a contemporary mixed media visual artist and is one of the four artists who have been selected for the ‘My Artful Way’ commission. Rosie’s proposed work will be themed around the industrial archaeology of Carlisle, focusing on Dixon’s Mill at Shaddongate and links to the slave trade which are not always widely recognised. Rosie will follow the defunct canal route from Carlisle to Port Carlisle for her walk.
Rosie creates paintings, drawings, sculpture, and digital pieces that explore semiotics, materiality, femininity and identity. Her interest in materiality has led her to consider the artefacts of empire, particularly textiles and clothing. For her Artful Ways piece she is planning to produce a quantity of miniatures of slave clothing, made from striped chambray, which most closely resembles the cloth that would have been made at Dixon’s mill. She plans to place the items of clothing at regular points along the canal route to symbolise the journey the spun cloth would have taken on its way towards the Atlantic.
Born in England, and raised in Scotland and Cumbria, where she currently resides, Rosie grew up in an eccentric family with Roman Catholic parents and eleven siblings. She studied Fine Art at the University of Humberside and completed her masters in Fine Art Painting at Glasgow School of Art in 2018. Rosie has worked extensively in art education and has lived and worked abroad in Portugal, Barcelona and Canada as well as exhibiting her work locally and internationally.
Rosie’s recent practice has been based on reimagining feminine desire past and present, with clothing, particularly dresses, being a central and reoccurring theme. She is also interested in understanding what it means to be English/British and engage with our complicated and ambiguous imperial history head on. She is presently researching the history of the British Empire and trying to understand how it continues to impact current events and modern Britain. Her work has been described as dark, curious, edgy, vibrant and textural. Expressing strong and ambiguous emotion is central to Rosie’s work and each piece has a personal element.
