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Estelle Woolley

@estellewoolley

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Interdisciplinary artist
www.estellewoolley.com
[email protected]

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My love of working with dandelion seed heads has re-emerged as I’ve been patiently waiting for the right season to experiment with them in this installation, alongside horsehair. I’m drawn to bringing attention to fragile, delicate materials and pushing them to their limits, whilst also working with and responding to the subtle rhythms, changes, and beauty of the natural world, reframing it in a contained and controlled way in a white space, seperate from its wild origins.

The dandelion is both dismissed as an invasive weed and also cherished as something magical; a flower tied to wishes, childhood, folklore and transience.

Next time, I’d like to experiment with hanging the clocks much closer together to create a denser, more cloud-like formation.

I’d love the opportunity to install these in a gallery / window space around this time next year, so if anyone has ideas for possible locations, spaces & opportunities then I’d be really interested to hear them. The installation will last upto two weeks until it starts to shed its seeds. by @estellewoolley

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8

5 months ago

These are just a few of my artworks that will be featured in our upcoming exhibition, 'Remember Nature', at Castlefield Gallery New Art Spaces: Chester, opening on 1st November. We’ll be holding an opening event on Tuesday 4th November, coinciding with Remember Nature Day of Action, 4-6pm, all welcome. ✨️🌿

It’s an incredible opportunity to work within such a large space, presenting both new and existing pieces. This setting allows me to reflect on the recurring connections and themes that have emerged throughout my practice over the years. My work tends to be subtle and understated, often created from delicate natural materials. It explores visceral emotions: curiosity, beauty, the sublime, the uncanny, fear, disgust, love, and pain, embedded within these materials which are gently transformed to evoke new readings.

It's so inspiring to have such a strong selection of artists to exhibit alongside from the UK and beyond, which were hand selected by myself and the very talented Jill Walker, whose work I deeply admire.

Curating and organising other artists, figuring out my own work, doing all the necessary admin and juggling various spinning plates feels a little bit like herding cattle, except much more challenging. Give me some cows to round up any day! On the home stretch now with nearly all the work installed in the gallery. Can't wait to see you there! 🙏✨️🌿

#RNGM25 #CastlefieldGalleryassociates #CastlefieldGalleryNewArtSpacesChester #NASChester #ChesterContemporaryArtists taken in Eastgate Square by @estellewoolley

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7

a year ago

Penelope
2024
Film and audio (2 minutes and 23 seconds)
(Excerpt from)
View the full film: www.estellewoolley.com

Shown in the ING Discerning Eye Exhibition, London
& Chester Photo Festival: Castlefield Gallery New Art Spaces Chester

-----

The film began while I was living on my family’s dairy farm in Cheshire. I filmed Penelope chewing and staring directly into the camera. It's an idea I’d had in the back of my mind for many years, and the right moment finally presented itself to capture the footage as I’d imagined it. I didn't even need to loop it - she stared right at the camera for a solid two minutes without breaking eye contact. It was perfect.

I wanted to pair her confrontational gaze with a version of myself in soliloquy with her: a softly spoken poem exploring my thoughts, feelings, and life long experiences of forming intimate bonds with these beautiful animals and the ways in which I spoke to them. The poem explores my reflections on objectification and power, refering to Penelope as the number on her eartag, (an idea inspired by artist Janine Antoni), yet is balanced with a deeply compassionate and gentle humour.

In the second screen I am mirroring her: chewing gum whilst leaning against a graffitied wall, wearing hooped earrings and cow eartags, staring at the camera - trying to look hard!

---

Excerpt from the poem:

"You’re just a cow,
you’re just a number. You’re an object
to be used.
You’re a female!
My brother named you Penelope.

I’m looking at you
as you’re looking back at me,
and as I gaze into your big, beautiful eyes, I can’t help but question
that to take without asking,
without a pause,
to blindly ignore
your motherly cries in the night,
in a field where power dictates the laws.

I chew my gum
to ease this anxiety
and then I say
- who’s a good girl, Penelope?

Yeah, it’s you! Yeah you are!
Do you want an apple?
I bet you do. I bet you love apples."

------

Special thanks to Benny Woo for tech support by @estellewoolley

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2 years ago

So grateful to get my hands on a physical copy of the academic journal 'Fashion, Style and Popular Culture: Dressing Through Pandemics special issue', especially as I’m the cover girl! Such a lovely achievement to celebrate.

Huge thanks again to @dr_ekealymorris for the journal itself, and for all the hard work editing, supporting, and championing everyone’s contributions throughout the process. And to the wonderful Dr @hannahharry66 for writing such a beautifully romanticised essay exploring the processes and thinking behind my Pandemic Nature Mask project, created during lockdown in 2020.

A special shout out as well to @lukemcello for originally commissioning and supporting the project through Cheshire West and Chester Council, and for continuing to champion both my practice and future projects ever since - especially A Forager’s Manual and Fashion On The Rows!

And finally, thank you to everyone else who became part of the journey along the way - whether you modelled for me, exhibited the work, published it, supported it, shared it, voted for it, bought a piece, or just gave me the confidence to keep going by saying you liked what I was doing. I’m incredibly grateful.

"In the summer of 2020, during lockdown restrictions, artist Estelle Woolley walked the lanes surrounding her family farm, foraging plants and wildflowers that she then used to make a series of floral masks. Woolley subsequently took a series of photographic self portraits wearing her ephemeral creations; it is these self portraits that form her artwork... Key themes of discussion points include isolation and the power of creativity to connect us, the symbolic potential of plants and other natural materials and the link between technology and imagination. Woolley’s imaginitive process translated natural elements of British fields and hedgerows into symbolic art forms, capable of speaking to people - thanks to technology - across boundaries of time and space; she used the natural landscape as a means of connecting with others at a time when we were locked away - from ourselves, from nature and physically, from each other". Dr Hannah Harry

#academicjournal #pandemicnaturemasks #floralmasks by @estellewoolley

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16

5 months ago

Delighted to have an image from my project 'Fashion On The Rows' printed in Cheshire West and Chester Council's Culture Manifesto, launched last week.

Fashion On The Rows was a community engagement project, commissioned as part of CWAC’s Refresh initiative; a cultural recovery programme designed to bring high quality arts and cultural activities back into Chester, including the Heritage Action Zone bid in which culture and creative activity is inspired by the distinctive heritage of the Rows. The aim of the project was to highlight Chester's prior millinery trade, the history of promenading along the Rows, and the closure of Browns department store, whilst engaging with the local community and collaborating with other creatives.

My choice of natural materials in the various headwear, such as taxidermy and natural curiosities, was inspired by a Victorian aesthetic and a nod to how the Victorians with their taste for the unusual celebrated the rows when they were in danger of closing in the 1800s.

I was joined by a creative team from across the UK on the day of shooting, including previous collaborator - Edinburgh based portrait photographer Jaime Molina. @jaime.a.molina

The photoshoot incorporated people from the local community and the University of Chester, @uochester alongside models from Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Cheshire, and hair and makeup artists from Merseyside.

The project included a competition, workshops and an exhibition at Contemporary Art Space Chester @cascgallery , as well as commissions with other Chester based creatives - filmmaker Sam Ryley, visual artist Clare Owens and singer songwriter Ashley Fayth. @canteencreate

This was my favourite hat - a nest I made from foraged birch, willow, blossom, ivy, wax flowers and blown eggs, modelled by the ever supportive @zoe_birtwhistle

I've also included a couple of other images from the day. To see more please visit @fashionontherows and search for the film made by Sam Ryley on YouTube where you can also hear Ashley's song - Feathers, Hats and Crowns. 🌿

Makeup: Lauren Wills @laurenwills_mua &
Caitlin Lynch @caitlin.lynch.makeup
Hair: @danielle.leylandhair
Behind scenes support: @lukemcello taken in Chester Rows by @estellewoolley

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9 months ago

Looking back at some of the highlights from my year:

- Selected for the ING Discerning Eye Exhibition in London
- Successfully managed the smooth running of our studios and gallery space at NAS Chester without burning the place down and got over my fear of risk assessments
- Co-curated Remember Nature, exhibiting several pieces of my work plus 14 other artists from the UK and overseas (this was a huge undertaking!)
- Exhibited in the Chester Photo Festival with my performance Rollo's Danube, exploring my interest in interspecies collaboration
- Launched my website (why do I still feel like an imposer?!)
- Had a solo window exhibition, experimenting with adding living plants into my sculptural assemblages
- Filmed an experimental improvised collaborative performance exchanging found natural materials
- Took part in, and facilitated several workshops building on my floristry/foraging, aromatherapy and clay skills ✨️
- Visited several inspiring and moving exhibitions (Flowers at the Saatchi, Helen Chadwick's Life Pleasures at Hepworth, John Renshaw Retrospective in Stockport, ANEW Way To Peel An Orange at Castlefield Gallery Manchester, Marina Abromavic's Balton Erotic Epic, David Nash at Ruth Craft Centre)

All this whilst navigating a weath of personal challenges including the death of my Dad, of which I organised a cracking send off for him

Thank you to everyone who has supported me and been a part of my journey. Here's to more artistic endeavours in 2026! ✨️ by @estellewoolley

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3

10 months ago

Untitled
2010
Spiders legs, plug and sink

Recently on show at Remember Nature, Castlefield Gallery New Art Spaces: Chester

To anyone who came to visit our exhibition and left wondering why there was a dirty old sink in the gallery. It wasn't a pretentious attempt at reinventing Duchamp's Fountain! Inside the sink is a delicately crafted chain constructed from linking fragile spiders legs together. On first glance they look like a rusty chain, but to the keen eye unfolds an uncanny and uncomfortable transformation using the legs of an insect that you'd perhaps encounter crawling from such a sink and recoiling in fear. I love how this sense of cognitive dissonance, of both attraction and repulsion is felt in the viewer. (I don't really experience it myself but I could perhaps relate it to the sensation I felt when I experienced Helen Chadwick's 'Carcass' at the Hepworth recently.)

I exhibited this in my degree show at The Cube Gallery in Manchester, at Mill:24 Islington Mill in Salford, and at Wunderland, Tactile Bosch Gallery in Cardiff. It was great to give this piece another outing recently. It's one of my favourite things that I've made over the years and is also one of the most delicate things I've made, and I love that tension - that it could collapse at any moment. It requires a bit of re-mending (from recently deceased spiders and precision jewellery glue) every time I take it out and find a suitable sink to house it in!

#CastlefieldGalleryassociates #CastlefieldGalleryNewArtSpacesChester #rngm25 by @estellewoolley

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0

a year ago

Shoe Horn
2013

Ballet shoe and cows horn

Recently on show at Remember Nature, Castlefield Gallery New Art Spaces Chester

Photo: Peter Davies

#objectjuxtaposition by @estellewoolley

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2

a year ago

Rose Tea
Teacup, saucer, and thorns on stand

Recently exhibited at Remember Nature, Castlefield Gallery New Art Spaces: Chester, this precariously balanced sculpture explores the playful tension created by juxtaposing a comforting object with something sharp and unsettling. The result is a piece that feels almost tactile. Its fragility and discomfort are felt just by looking.

I’ve always adored gathering thorns from hedgerows, and this was one of the first works I created with them back in 2013. Other early experiments included placing thorns around bicycle wheels in cement.

Placed on a thin metal stand in a very unstable manner, the work creates a further sense of delicacy and tension.

Photo by Peter Davies by @estellewoolley

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a year ago

Detail from my series of sculptural assemblages, Gathering Stillness, recently shown in Remember Nature at Castlefield Gallery New Art Spaces Chester.

Thorns, bicycle horn, milking utensil, retail stand, copper wire and tape (2025)

This series incorporates objects from my former life on a dairy farm, assembled in configurations that create a tension between delicacy and precarity. The thorns, gathered from surrounding hedgerows introduce an anticipatory sense of pain. A milking utensil, with its acoustic history embedded in my memory, is positioned on a stand retrieved from the depths of the former Topshop basement, which is now my studio. Juxtaposed with a bicycle horn - another object of sonic potential.

Photograph: Peter Davies
@castlefieldgall New Art Spaces Chester

#RNGM25 #castlefieldgalleryassociates by @estellewoolley

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a year ago

A few images from the private view of Remember Nature last week, at Castlefield Gallery New Art Spaces Chester, honouring Gustav Metzger’s Remember Nature Day on Tuesday 4th November. My homemade apple juice was a hit!

Thanks everyone for your support - we had a fantastic turnout throughout the exhibition.

Remember Nature was a group exhibition, featuring artists from the UK and beyond, curated by and including work by myself and artist
@jillwalker.uk, alongside:

@olanalight
@nickdaviesworks
@lydiaoharaartist
@minlillalott_fineart
@timjohnsonartist
@_tim_foxon_
@timothypughartist
@elephantvisionlab
@melaniekatking
@_nathan_taylor
@silenceinseeing
@sculpturejourney

Photographs by: @peter_d_photography

With thanks to:
@castlefieldgall taken in Eastgate Square by @estellewoolley

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4

a year ago

Detail shot from my installation of assemblages, 'Gathering Stillness' at Remember Nature, Castlefield Gallery New Art Spaces Chester

Baby rat, nest and earphones
2025

The work highlights the beauty, wonder and delicacy of the natural world in relation to Gustav Metzger’s call to action to Remember Nature

📸 by Peter Davies

#RNGM25 #castlefieldgalleryassociates by @estellewoolley

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2

a year ago