VISUAL ARTIST AND SET DESIGNER NICOLA YEOMAN
Nicola Yeoman grew up on a farm in North Yorkshire, built dens in barns, and eventually built sets for some of the most demanding photographers working today. Her work moves between elaborate interiors, junk yard sculptures, and dreamlike installations, each built to a specific vantage point, each carrying hidden stories and details. She splits her time between London and the Oxfordshire countryside.
Yeoman moved to London in 2001 and worked at the Guardian as a picture editor while studying furniture at Guildhall University. Her combined love of photography and her practical skills as a designer led to an accidental career as a set designer. The farm in North Yorkshire never left her, though. The dens she built in barns as a child are still evident in her work today, as she builds sets that range from elaborate interiors to junkyard sculptures and ethereal, dreamlike worlds. Whether built in trees or industrial interior spaces, her work plays with perspective and always has hidden surprises, stories, and details entwined.
She has collaborated with photographers including Dan Tobin Smith, Toby McFarlan Pond, Jenny Van Sommers, Mario Testino, Sam Taylor Wood, Miles Aldridge, Steve Harries, Jo Metson Scott, and Kate Jackling.
Nicola Yeoman My greatest inspirations are in nature. When I am in the city for too long I crave the space. I miss the horizons, seeing sunset and sunrise, the ebbs and flow of the seasons, the swallows arriving, the change in landscape. It's not that I go for a walk and have eureka moments, in fact often my mind can be blank. It's afterwards, when I'm back in the city, that it creeps in. It ignites thoughts and ideas which often emerge at a later date.
Yorkshire and the farm are my biggest inspiration. After that it's mostly things which remind me of it, from derelict empty sheds and buildings, to machinery, cogs, implements, to nature itself, its brutality more than its beauty, and probably isolation. I like lone places, or lone things, something with a history or story that has been left to rot. I'm a country girl at heart, but like the hard mix of the city too, which I think is probably evident in my work.
In terms of other artists my inspirations are vast and varied but if I had to pick one I would say Anselm Kiefer. There is a rawness to his work that massively resonates with me.
"I like lone places, or lone things, something with a history or story that has been left to rot."
Nicola YeomanNicola Yeoman My creative process has always been very organic. Sometimes I will sketch an idea then try and make it, but it always changes. Once your hands start working they kind of lead the way, it's just an instinctive thing really. I tend to have a large selection of materials, of ingredients to hand, and then just start tinkering until it feels complete.
Nicola Yeoman The pandemic was in many ways a really great turning point for me. I had been working on much larger scale projects, big installations and events, then suddenly everything was cancelled. All my work booked in for the year disappeared. After the initial panic and anxiety, and trying to home school a six-year-old, I found a stillness that hadn't been there for years. I spent a few months back on my dad's farm in Yorkshire, spent time in the fields and on the land, turned a shed into a studio, and started tinkering. I re-found my love for stills and creating images and started taking pictures myself. Two years later and this is now a regular practice for me. I do still work commercially and enjoy collaborating with other photographers, but I spend an equal amount of time now on my own practice.
And Then series
Typographic installation · Courtesy the artist
"I re-found my love for stills and creating images and started taking pictures myself. Two years later and this is now a regular practice for me."
Nicola YeomanNicola Yeoman Wellbeing these days I would say is trying to keep mental equilibrium. I think work is probably the single and only practice I have that helps. It's meditative. You can zone out and lose hours creating. Your mood and state of mind is irrelevant, in fact it often helps to feel a bit jangly and to channel that energy.
