Almuth Tebbenhoff is inspired by process and particularly enjoys the way objects of beauty and intrigue can emerge from a noisy session cutting and welding steel, or from a quieter but no less messy afternoon pushing and pummelling wet clay. Her artistic journey began when she moved from Germany to London in 1970 and trained in studio ceramics. Her curiosity and appetite for diverse materials quickly led her to use clay as a testing ground for more abstract sculptural forms and over the next four decades she would go on to explore the alchemy of drawing, metal fabrication, marble carving and bronze casting.
While metalworking is still frequently seen as a masculine activity, Tebbenhoff utilises the interplay of light and shadow, strength of materiality and fragility of form, to forge a unique relationship with steel that allows power and vulnerability to coexist. Her early steel works such as Three in Ten and Slope were monochromatic explorations of geometric 3D illusions, with fluorescent paint on the hidden concave surfaces which creates a soft glow against white walls. More recently Tebbenhoff has softened her sculptural forms, such as in Clef which appears to melt under the weight of gravity.
Working loosely in series, such as her garden of steel flowers, Tebbenhoff allows the space for the close study of a subject. However, she dislikes working in multiples meaning each work on show is unique. A constant throughout her practice has been her curious questioning of what it means to be human in a world of contradictions, in her own words “a world that contains incredible human achievement and enormous failures in equal measure”.
Along with her continued interest in material exploration, Tebbenhoff’s works delight in their sense of the sublime, often drawing inspiration from trees, flora, mountains, and the skies. Her childhood growing up in rural Germany, stargazing with her sisters through her father’s telescope fostered her deep fascination with nature and astronomical space which can be seen in her early Petrified series, reminiscent of rocky asteroids, as well as recent drawing Landscape with Holes which depicts a strange landscape, potted with hollow craters with streams of gasses drifting skywards.