Biography

Joy Millett graduated with a Masters in Fine Art from the University of Creative Arts, Farnham in 2024.  Born and raised in North Yorkshire, she currently lives and works between North Yorkshire and Surrey.

Artist’s Statement

Joy Millett’s modernist, minimalist, sculptural forms reference neo-classical architecture that houses ambiguous signs and symbols drawn from forms found in nature. The symbols invite the viewer to take time out to contemplate their own meaning of them. Paradoxically, they provide a salve to our snappy, emoji-driven, fast-paced world.

She crafts shapes from the modernist material Perspex and supports them in metal or wooden geometric structures and semiotic space to create a crisp, colourful and yet playful aesthetic. The sculptures represent the existential dichotomies of the built environment (or indeed, other manufactured systems) juxtaposed with nature and also our rational and instinctive inner worlds.

Often site-specific, they draw on the architectural style and ethos of a particular arts hub.

This semiotic practice uses symbols or signs as language, with reference to form colour and space. The shapes are drawn from geometry in nature, architecture and cultural objects. Often site-specific, the printed or sculptural works adapt to their curated space. The practice strongly relates to the lived in world of materiality.

Shows

2024

• Postgraduate Show, University for Creative Arts (UCA), Farnham, Surrey

• Limn, Watts Gallery, Compton, Surrey

• Tread Carefully, Leith Hill Hall, Coldharbour, Surrey

• Fine Art Symposium, UCA

• Intimate Geometry, UCA