Jo Lathwood (b.1984) is a visual artist. Working with recycled timber she has built a meandering staircase that travelled across three storeys to facilitate the audience to touch the roof of a church. Experimenting with foundry technologies, she developed a way of casting lava into contemporary forms and through researching traditional techniques, she has made and shared how to make inks from Oak Galls. These ideas have grown from a focus around making and an examination of our impact and relationship with the natural and built environment. Themes such as transitions, viewpoints, illusions, aspiration, environmentalism and capitalism are woven through her practice.
Past activities include: Material as Labour, Labour as value, essay for Yellowfields, Publication (2020); Graft Ladder, part of Open-Up at Hestercombe Gallery and gardens, Taunton (2020); Well Trodden Wrong Ways, dual exhibition with Paul Blakemore at Thelma Hulbert Gallery, East Devon, (2019); LTU-19 (with Eleanor Duffin), part of Women on the Moon group exhibition, KKKC, Klaipeda, Lithuania. (2019); Getting There, solo exhibition at Fabrica, Brighton UK (2018); Curious Formations, TNA commission at Biddulph Grange, Stoke on Trent, UK (2017); Is it magma?, solo exhibition at Earth Gallery, University of Bristol, UK (2016); A Solid Above, dual exhibition with Solveig Settemsdal at Hardwick Gallery, University of Gloucester, UK (2016); Resident artist at Hestercombe Gallery and Gardens, Somerset, UK (2015); Art, Cities & Landscapes, commission in Amiens, France (2013).
Lathwood is on the Board of Trustees for BRICKS Bristol and part of the EARTHart council at the University of Bristol. She was the co-director of Ore and Ingot, an artist-led fine art bronze foundry in Bristol (2012-2018).