About — Sophie Standford Website

Sophie Standford

The Unearthings
A Rural Idyll
In the Forest Garden
Inner Landscapes
Absent Presence
Trace
Photomontage
Performative Drawing
Act of Listening
About

@hortus_silvam

Sophie Standford is a multidisciplinary artist based in Suffolk. She seeks to capture the intangible vulnerability of our encounters with one another and the living world, drawing on inner landscapes of fear, memory, longing and loss, through acts of listening, performance, collaboration and quiet activism. These acts can be traced within layers of still and moving images, acousmatic sound, performative drawing and the processing of inherited archives into curious, surreal palimpsests and photomontage. Her approach is reflexive and responsive, subjective and observational, allowing humour and the absurd to interact with tension and disquiet, blurring boundaries between sights, sounds and smells of the real, the imagined and the remembered, as they coalesce with the passing of time.

Current themes include unearthing the ‘rural’ where the wild and industrial intersect and elide, performing quiet activism in the Forest Garden Project, collaborating with transitional objects of grief.

She recently screened a collection of moving image works on a theme of domesticity at Project DIVFUSE in London (2025). Her work in sound has been selected for the British Library Sound and Moving Image Archive Collection (2025).

CV
Solo Exhibitions
2025 Dialogues, DIVFUSE Film Archive No.1 with a theme on domesticity

Collections
2025 Sound and Moving Image Collection, British Library Sound Archive

Sound
2025 Ephemeral Things Digital Album, limited edition CD, Bandcamp,
2024 Pond Flora & Fauna broadcast Framework Radio/Resonance FM
2023 Drawing Digital Album, Bandcamp
2023 Hiding selected for Murmuration#3 - Species, Digital Album, Bandcamp
2022 The Caged and the Free Digital Album, Bandcamp
2022 Dialogue with my Father III: Now He is Gone Digital Album, Bandcamp
2022 Apple Orchard; In the Forest Garden broadcast Framework Radio/Resonance FM
2022 /prə(ʊ)ˈkrastɪneɪt/ Digital Album, Bandcamp
2022 (in)visible Digital Album, Bandcamp
2022 Chain-Link broadcast Framework Radio/Resonance FM, Field Recording
2022 Domestic Boiler broadcast Framework Radio/Resonance FM, Field Recording

Group Shows
1994 Two Nudes; Two Nudes, projection Ruskin School, Oxford University
1994 Notation Drawings, collage, photomontange on paper, Warsaw, Poland
1994 Nude Against the Light, performance, Reichstag, Berlin
1994 Intangible Distance; Nude Combing Her Hair, performance, Long Room, New College, Oxford
1993 Exhibition of Drawing and Painting, Group Show, work on paper, University College, Oxford
1993 Disembodied; Nude at the Window, performance, Group Show, Bermondsey, London

Residencies
2022 Murmuration#3 - Species, Scotland
2006 What will you be when you grow up? Community mural mosaic, London
2002 Video Portraits Year 7-8 students, digital video with sound 5’, London
1998 Transience; Nude in an Interior objects, performance, 16mm film with sound, London

Curator
2007 The Rhythm of Life an inclusive community art exhibition Croydon Clocktower

Co-founder
2013-15 Make it! a CIC offering art workshops to adults with learning disabilities

Education
2015 Forest Garden Design, Martin Crawford Agroforestry Research Trust, Devon
2000 PGDip Teaching in the Lifelong Learning Sector
1998 MA Enterprise & Management of the Creative Arts, London College of Communication
1997 PGDip Law, BBP Law School, London
1994 16mm Film, London Filmmakers Coop
1994 BA Fine Art (Ist Class Hons), Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University, Oxford
1990 Fine Art Foundation Course, West Yorkshire

Membership
a-n Artist Membership
Outpost Gallery, Norwich

Literary Executor
2014- Custodian of the literary estate of composer and writer Patric Standford

Through the 1990s and early 2000s, Standford stopped showing her work while continuing to develop her art practice embracing the emergence of portable, digital video and sound as tools for documentation and manipulation with the accessibility of consumer video cameras, sound recorders, tiny microphones and editing software, while living without a studio in London. During this time she had a child; briefly worked for Book Works (1995) and Wise Music Group (1996); studied PGDip Law (1997) to understand a personal injury claim arising from a road accident; gained PGDip Teaching in the Lifelong Learning Sector (2000); initiated local, community Artist in Residence projects in London including Video Portraits (2002) and What will you be when you grow up? (2005); curated The Rhythm of Life art exhibition at Croydon Clocktower (2006); home educated her son (2008-2011); co-founded Make it! a CIC offering art workshops to adults with learning disabilities (2013-15).