Pernille Abildtrup Holm is a Danish artist who lives and works in the UK. Arriving in London in the early 1990s, she enrolled at Goldsmiths College to study Fine Art, and later completed Master degrees in Visual Culture at Middlesex University and Printmaking at Wimbledon School of Art. She graduated in 2006 with a practice-based Ph.D. from Goldsmiths College.

 

A broadly based fine artist, her practice is not confined to any one particular medium: her choice of materials and forms of expression are dependent on the ideas she explores at a given time, and has included drawing, printmaking, mixed media, photography, sculptural objects, installation, and video.

 

On the surface, much of her work appears simple, sensuous, and elegant in its design – perhaps a reference to her Danish cultural background – yet this air of cool sophistication is always paired with, and occasionally subverted by, an equally persistent sense of the absurd, the ridiculous, and the excessive.

   

The starting point for much of her work is her immediate surroundings, whether the domestic clutter of a home and a life lived with children, or the quiet wilderness of ancient woodland in Kent. Carefully selecting images, objects, or scenes from these environments, her work explores their complex and emotionally charged references in light of overlaps - and conflicts - between subjective, social, and aesthetic experiences. Reflecting moments of inter-relational exchanges, intimacy and play, her pieces explore the poetic potential of the ‘ordinary’ and the larger cultural context the ‘private’.

 

Pernille Holm has exhibited her work in solo shows in London and taken part in numerous group exhibitions across Britain and in Europe.