Jill Randall

Jill has recently become a member of Incidental_Unit, an organisation which seeks to continue the legacy of APG, and to reignite debates about the role of the artist in society.

Jill undertook a Research Residency at Tate Britain in 2013, studying the APG (Artist Placement Group) Archive in order to investigate the origins of her own industry residencies and the negotiations involved.

Following Jill’s recent exhibition, Cornwall Museum & Art Gallery (CMAG) have acquired Jill’s work for their permanent collection.

‘Geevor Galaxy Dreaming’ is a large, limited edition print, a deeply-etched, multi-coloured layered etching on steel, deeply ‘bitten’ by leaving in acid for a long time. It contains subtle map drawings taken from archival maps which Jill  studied of the Geevor and Levant historic tin mines in West Cornwall, overlaid with images of bryophytes – the rare and peculiar tiny plants that colonise contaminated post-mining ground. Jill is interested in the idea of an alternative nature and alternative beauty to be found in these often bleak and overlooked environments.

In Jan 25, Jill’s solo exhibition, ‘As Above, So Below’ tours form Cornwall Museum & Art Gallery to the Roger Preston Gallery, Wheal Martyn China Clay Museum, St Austell, Cornwall. The exhibition comprises  28 prints and  14 sculptures, and continues Jill’s series of exhibiting challenging contemporary art in museum or heritage settings, in order to engage new and different audiences.

This significant solo exhibition brings together a new collection of new prints and sculpture produced in response to Randall’s visit to Eureka Reef, in the old goldfields of Victoria, Australia in 2017. It is the first time much of the work has been exhibited.

“The exhibition forms part of the artist’s ongoing project to link Cornwall with sites in Australia and Mexico, where Cornish miners were a valuable resource and where cultural links still exist thanks to mining-related migration. Randall seeks to reveal beauty in these “obscure, overlooked and forgotten” corners of the landscape which have been abandoned after industrial use. Many of these environments which we may perceive as ‘spoiled’, are gradually being recolonised by nature, creating a poetic resonance and an interesting – sometime disconcerting – layering of the landscape. Randall’s work plays with these notions of “non-beauty or an alternative beauty, and alternative nature drawn from abject and strange places.”
For Randall, metals are the key narrative thread in her practice, forming a vital part of her approach to sculpture. Randall has physically followed these threads to Australia and Mexico in search of the copper, gold, and silver mines worked by Cornish miners a long way from home, and to observe the vibrant Cornish culture in these faraway places.
Randall’s sculptures reference the destructive nature of mining and the physical action of bringing what is underneath up to the surface. Themes of the unique botany and ecology of old mining sites are also explored, as well as ideas about forgetting and obliterating, metaphorically and actually, and ideas about the overlooked significance of Cornish mining, which helped to build the wealth of Australia and the British Empire.

As Above, So Below includes prints created with a variety of techniques including etching, drypoint, and collagraphs. Repeated sculptural processes and even power tools are used for mark making during Randall’s printmaking process, sometimes resulting in the destruction of the printing plate itself. Rubbing out, drilling, gouging, and exploring the fine line between creation and destruction, are all characteristics of her processes, linking method intrinsically with subject matter.” (From CMAG website text).

‘Randall’s work focuses on artists residencies in industrial settings as the context for new work, often revealing the sublime and beautiful in extreme and unusual places. She has a history of working with post-industrial sites to harness toxic aftermath or ‘spoiled’ environments , revealing an alternative ‘nature’ and alternative ‘beauty’.

Brison’s Veor is an amazing artists house perched high on the cliffs at wild Cape Cornwall, the most westerly point in Britain. Jill was selected, along with artist Alan Birch to undertake a 2-week residency in 2024. The work produced during the Residency forms part of an ongoing series investigating historic mining sites in Cornwall, and the connections through the Cornish mining diaspora with Australia and Mexico. Jill set up a print workshop, creating a series of new prints based on the St Just Mining area, focussing on the rare plants which grow on contaminated ground. She undertook a series of walks to find, identify and record these plants in the immediate area, and images of these have been incorporated into the prints produced.
Jill is working towards a major solo exhibition, ‘As Above, So Below,’ at The Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro, Nov 24-Feb 25. A selection of the new work produced at Brisons Veor will be included in this exhibition.

60 artists, from a variety of different disciplines who exhibited in an exhibition in 2012 in Manchester, were invited once more to submit a drawing alongside 10 new artists invited to exhibit alongside the original 60 at The Whitaker.

60 Drawings + 10 explores, defines and celebrates the locality and discipline of drawing in its diverse forms.

My drawing presented in the exhibition, ‘Found Drawing, Parys Mountain Underground. Bridge,16 fathoms. First attempt ‘, has been selected from a body of 10 large ‘found drawings’. These huge, brightly-coloured drawings have been created by the passage of time in pitch blackness in the abandoned underground mine workings at Parys Mountain Copper Mine, Anglesey, by the repeated action of mineral drippings through the mine. Strategically placed , left for 6 weeks, and then retrieved (with difficulty), they have been carried up and down rickety ladders in pitch blackness, retracing the steps and actions of the early miners. The drawing both describes, and is created by, its unique environment.

Sixty Drawings + Ten

Jill is exhibiting a series of prints in this special print exhibition at The Millyard Gallery, Uppermill, Oldham.

All work is for sale including unframed works in the print rack.

Jill was invited by PAPER Gallery, Manchester, to exhibit her sculpture on the PAPER stand at the Manchester Contemporary, Nov 19th-21st.