Following a degree in Art History and English at York University, UK, Ibby spent three years training to be an easel paintings’ conservator at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Since graduating in 2004 she has worked as an artist, conservator and researcher into paintings and collections. She is particularly interested in the history of making, and in the human relationship with materials and the natural world in the creation of art and telling of stories. She has recently completed an MA in Arts and Ecology, and her practice focusses on the interwoven narratives of the human and more-than-human.
Applying her knowledge of traditional materials and techniques, Ibby has extensively used drawing as an intimate means of knowing and understanding the land and life around her. Often focussing on themes of species loss and interdependence, in her work natural foraged materials are used to make tools, pigments and cloth. Borrowing Donna Haraway’s concept of ‘sympoiesis’, or a ‘making with’, the work becomes collaborative and relational. It seeks to return agency to the more-than-human and convey an equality of individual lived experience between species, always looking to a future of kinship. Making becomes a visceral art of recognition and remembrance; an act of care, and quiet resistance within the ‘violent unmaking’ of life in the Anthropocene.
Ibby is an elected associate member of the Society of Graphic Fine Art and serves on the council. She has exhibited throughout the UK and her work is held in public and private collections. She lives in Devon.
