Sheena Vallely

Born in Armagh, Sheena Vallely left Ireland to study fine art at Manchester Polytechnic and from Liverpool College of Art she has a BA in sculpture. On moving to London she took to running her own business Dirty Dog designing and printing T-shirts for festivals and London trade fairs to businesses in Spain and Japan. Screenprinting and monoprinting t-shirts paved the way for her to gain a masters in printmaking from Camberwell College of Art, after which she became a printmaking lecturer at University of Hertfordshire and London College of Communication. On ensuing years, printmaking endeavours saw Sheena collaborating with fellow artist and musician John Say to publish artists books under their name reassemble, the publications of which saw them make installations incorporating printmaking with audio, overhead projections and Super 8 film, and led reassemble to show installations in London, Malmo and Berlin, and during which time reassemble was awarded the Birgit Sciold Prize for Excellence for its first editioned artists book. Now in Bristol since 2012, Sheena continues to exhibit her work in printmaking and in painting nationally and internationally and having run specialised printmaking workshops on artist residencies in Germany and Belgium, she currently teaches printmaking with carborundum masterclasses at Curwen Study Centre Cambridge.

My work in print, painting and in 3D is a personal take on everyday subjects and artefacts. Flea market items carry a history and bear a treasure-like preciousness for me and the same goes for found objects which often have an interesting patina, colour or material that grabs my attention to foster and to develop into a piece of work. My colour palette in painting has only recently surfaced in my printmaking and the prints in the browser and framed here are testament to this new departure.