Following a degree in Art History and English at York University, UK, Ibby trained as an easel paintings’ conservator at the Courtauld Institute of Art. She was part of an international study into the red lake pigments of van Gogh, and 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 holds an MA in Arts and Ecology, and her work focusses on the interwoven narratives of the human and more-than-human through time.
Deeply rooted in the specific materiality of place, in her wider practice Ibby uses a combination of drawing, writing, weaving and colour-making as intimate means of understanding the land and life around her. Borrowing Donna Haraway’s concept of ‘sympoiesis’ or a ‘making with,’ through the use of natural foraged materials the work becomes collaborative and relational. Often exploring themes of species loss and interdependence, it seeks to return agency to the more-than-human and convey an equality of individual lived experience between species. Making and writing become visceral arts of recognition and remembrance; acts of care, and quiet resistance within the ‘violent unmaking’ of life in the Anthropocene.
Ibby is an elected 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. Recent and forthcoming publications include Wild Roof Journal, Dark Mountain and the Center for Humans and Nature. She lives in Devon.
