Long Biography

Sophie Standford (she/her) was born in London, UK. Her parents were musicians; her mother taught piano and her father was a composer, teacher and writer. Playing the violin and attending dance classes from an early age established the importance of sound, music and performative actions in her work.
Standford studied Fine Art at the Ruskin School, Oxford University where she graduated with a First Class Honours degree in 1994. She was based in the sculpture department where an art practice making performances documented through film, photography and text emerged.

Performance offered a way of being alert to encounters in the world, pursuing the interaction between thought, experience and memory. Her performative acts are informed by the discipline of moving the body gained through studying dance. Her interest in the world of sound as an emotive and disorientating force encouraged by deep, long durational listening with her father, witnessing his process of composing at the piano for hours and noticing the painstaking process of notating each work - where to the non-musician, notation seemed to be a frustrating and compromised way of communicating and remembering musical ideas.

Standford’s interest in the natural environment was inspired by her mother’s love of nature and nature writing, brought to life during rural Spring-time holidays on day-long immersive walks in the contrasting landscapes of coast, woodland and open pasture, observing and listening for the presence and activity of wildlife, birdsong and the plant world.

In the intervening and following years, Standford completed Masters study in the Enterprise and Management of the Creative Arts at London College of Communication, a Postgraduate Diploma in Law to better understand 7 years of litigation following a road accident, taught English as a second language and taught adults in the Life-long Learning Sector in order to earn money and better support and home educate her son.

Commissions to make short, promotional videos and documentaries enabled Standford to work in circumstances without a studio and reflect on the process and meaning of editing and building narratives through sound and image.

Teaching for Standford was an opportunity to initiate and lead Artist Residencies in the community using the media of large-scale mosaics, video, photography and animation, to allow young people and their families the opportunity to explore their place in the world. She led art, vocal and horticultural workshops and co-founded a social enterprise company called Make it! offering creative opportunities to adults with learning difficulties/disabilities, up until 2016, including curating a vibrant public exhibition showcasing resultant painting, video, drawing and printmaking work in Croydon entitled The Rhythm of Life.

Standford’s art practice has been broadened by exploring a wide range of media where techniques have been learned through a range of study, training and short courses, including Tango in South London, bronze casting and book binding at Camberwell School of Art, ceramics, willow weaving and green woodcarving in the Peak District. All these various techniques make appearances in her current art practice.

Standford’s ongoing project in the forest garden has made her alert to how unresolved and contentious our human relationship with nature has become and the damage we wreak on the natural world.

The forest garden is a quarter acre garden plot developed along permaculture and edible forest garden principles, in Suffolk. An outdoor studio, a place for experimentation and an opportunity to nurture a space for biodiversity in direct contrast to the surrounding industrial, heavily fossil fuel reliant farming practices of monocrops and poultry rearing.

Standford moved to rural Suffolk in 2017 where she is currently based and develops a full time art practice.

In 2014 Standford was made Literary Executor of the music and literary estate of her father composer, teacher and writer Patric Standford.

SOPHIE STANDFORD

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Long Biography