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Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Penzance, TR20 8YL

Profile

Name

Carolyn Savidge

Member Since

May 2026

Contact Details
Statement

On a farm I started: balanced on a gate at garden’s end, lost in a dancing vision. And as time passed, the dream became real: a life in dance, from a love of nature’s gifts to stage – worldwide dance and teaching, Barbados Dance Theatre, Laban, Martha Graham, Limon, Isadora Duncan, Ballet, Afro Caribbean artists, icons shaping my world to inform, to create for stage and film.

Then the final curtain call (two children now). Second husband’s slow, painful decease. I bowed and left the stage, began to search. I saw grief, and myself, the world through a new lens. So it continued, the only boundaries now? Time.

Ten years pass since emerging from the last stage door. I used to dance. Now it’s done, yet creation is in me.

Intuition drives me as it once made the dance, darkness along the way. I’m germinating, curating expressions in vessels, seeding works.

Thoughts not always pretty as truths unravel with clay and found objects. All death and decay, skulls, dried vegetation, patterns in landscapes, intrigue. And my thinning, falling, hair.

More grief and pain: three wedding dresses now hang on wardrobe rails, mere fodder for the moths. I close the door on marriage.

Materials embody a stitched and layered-up life. A miscellany gathered from dusty cupboards echoes feelings, senses, memories.

My mind is whispering. Is this the truth?

Surprise in hand and heart, glimpsed in eyes who wonder at my body of work. The sound of love and laughter rings, an essence of change.

Grandchildren rush in.

But still, I balance on the farm gate, musing, laughing at old age, the need to create burning bright on my horizon. A following wind still shapes the passion – a passion to form, and inform, as form informs the process.

Exhibitions / Projects

Works 2015 – 2026 : Prose & Mixed Media

A Biscuit Tin of Memories (2015)
Site-specific Installation, Fringe Arts, Bath.

Embrace DNR (2015)
Solo exhibition, 44 AD, Bath : Writings & Performance Photography.
Claire Balding’s Artists Who Walk, BBC Radio, Mendips, Somerset.

Unsung Song (2019)
Installation assemblage curated group show, Bath.

In Kale(2019)
Mixed media installation, Kale. Curated group show, Bath.

Speak To Me (2021)
Bath open Art Prize, 44AD.

Whisperings (2022)
Ceramic Bowls Installations, misc. gardens galleries, Somerset. Black Swan Art Gallery, Frome (exhibition).

Hush: Rewilding My Mind (2022)
Film, prose.
Somerset Nature Connections. Somerset Wildlife Trust.

Cupping A Stone Heart (2023)
Sculpture, photography (private collector).

Murmurings (2024)
Mixed media ceramics. Selected Bath Open Prize.

Traces Kicked (2024)
Mixed media solo exhibition, Cheddar, Somerset.

Holding Up The Sky (2024)
Mixed Media, Photography (private collector).

History In The Wrong Shoes Sky (2024)
Mixed media installation.
Curated exhibition, Bath Fringe Festival.

All Hope (2025)
Bell Jar Assemblage, Glastonbury Gallery.

Death Vessel King Ja Ja (2025)
I Used To Dance (work-in-progress).

Sometimes (2025)
Mixed Media Collage : Stitched Autobiography Newlyn Exchange Art Gallery (informal sharing).

Aphrodite (Venus) (2025)

Upon my Head (2025)
Collection of all works from 2015 to current 2025 exhibition. Newlyn Arts School Agora Mentoring (on tour).

Craven (2026)
Mixed media wax sculpture.

2026 Lamentation (2026)
Mixed media wax sculpture.
Agora on tour : Phoenix Arts Centre, Brighton, Sussex.

Profile Photo
Carolyn Savidge https://www.carolynsavidgeartist.co.uk/

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About

Carolyn Savidge

An idyllic 1950s childhood observing and exploring the natural world on her grandparent’s Somerset farm still influences the creative output of artist, filmmaker, choreographer, writer, performer, lecturer, teacher & facilitator Carolyn Savidge.

Her mixed-media work explores perennial themes of love and loss, combining the serendipity of found objects in nature with the reality of our lived experience to present an absorbing, distinctive and closely observed artistic vision.

Carolyn challenges and redefines healing, memory and mental health, holistically considering physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing through her art practice.

In a diverse 50-year freelance career, Carolyn has also lived, worked, taught and performed in Africa, the Caribbean, India, Sri Lanka and the USA. She was a lecturer in contemporary dance at Brighton University, Laban Centre at Goldsmiths, University of London and The Place, London, and performed with the Barbados Dance Theatre Company for three years before founding the Carolyn Savidge Dance Company.

Carolyn has been a director, teacher and facilitator in primary and secondary schools, sixth-form colleges, academies and universities at home and abroad, including the American School in Lusaka, Zambia (where she also ran her own dance studio), and was visiting dance director for the annual International Festival of Dance, Music, Speech and Drama in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

As a performance artist she researched the cathartic transformative effects that come about through the simple act of taking unstructured walks in the landscape, which led to an appearance on BBC in Claire Balding on Ramblings: Artists’ Ways and still influences her artistic vision.

Based in Newlyn, Carolyn Savidge has directed Dance-for-Camera films, and hosts exhibitions and workshops at arts festivals, galleries and events throughout south-west England.