‘She who feasts, has her companions’ follows research into the history and folkloric tales of both traditional and contemporary British witchcraft in conjunction with natural phenomena existing within the world's landscape. In European folk-belief of the Medieval and Early Modern periods, ‘familiars’, sometimes referred to as "familiar spirits" or "animal guides", were believed to be supernatural entities that would assist witches and cunning folk in their practice of magic. It was said that they would appear in numerous guises, often as an animal, but also at times as a human or humanoid figure, and were described as ‘clearly defined, three-dimensional forms’, vivid with colour and animated with movement and sound. Familiar spirits were most commonly small animals, such as frogs, toads and rats. Here a trodden, squished, giant toad is caught with the artist’s footprint imprinted on its back.

Sophie's practice infuses the fragility of existence within the non-linear space between human and non-human. An intentional inquiry through the leading foot of the intuitive strange, it links the rural, environmental, mythological, political, folkloric and historical. The interwoven element of her making concerns itself within a cosmic space - weaving as a matrix - and the journey we experience between body, land and spirit. Combining traditionally hand-crafted techniques such as felting, weaving and ceramics, she explores and responds to a new ecological vision in opposition to the capital.

Sophie Goodchild is in her final year at The Royal College of Art MA Painting and is due to go on exchange to the Department of Crafts, Dyeing and Weaving at Kyoto City University of Arts, Japan, later this year.

Sophie previously studied on the Alternative MFA programme School of the Damned in 2019. In forthcoming projects, this summer, Sophie will be artist in residence at Troy Town Art Pottery to produce a body of work for her first solo show with Flatland Projects, Hastings in 2021, and is co-curating and exhibiting in a group show titled 'Locus Amoenus' at The Function Suite, Stratford this spring.

Sophie Goodchild was selected by Open Call.

SOPHIE GOODCHILD

‘SHE WHO FEASTS, HAS HER COMPANIONS’

Bronze

29cm x 29cm x 7cm (HWD)

Lockdown N.1 - 2020

Edition of 6

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