The Lightening (2021, detail).
Lesley Hilling is a London-based artist working solely with salvaged wood and other found materials. For decades she has collected the detritus left by previous generations. Discarded wooden debris is repurposed and reworked into brand new forms, jigsawed and layered with meticulous and methodical joinery. The ageing timber reminds us that people once used, worked and lived with this material. The exterior, architectural layering of buildings and cities is contrasted by the interior home space, with an emphasis on people, their memories and the passage of time. Hilling’s practice, as a whole, centres on the idea that “we were here, we existed.”
