Interview with: Shelley Lafferty
August 2025
Architect for 25yrs, Shelley’s works are expectedly spatial. With a personal interest in one’s identity, portraiture and the impact of grief, her research and art making has developed into the sphere of liminality, rites of passage and otherworldly spaces.
Exploring themes of the experience of the liminality, navigation through it, from entering, being within and the journey itself. Contemplating moments of the unknown within the sensation of an other-worldly space.
Welcome Shelley, first tell us about your background and why you chose to pursue this career. Do you remember the first artwork that stirred something inside you?
I am a recent MA Fine Art graduate, returning to study and my creative desires, after working for many years as an Architect. Always with a creative leaning, I have returned to making and developing installation and immersive spaces to encounter.
Creating is the core of who I am, and the desire to express and generate works, for beauty, for inspiration, for interest, is a passion that has been bubbling for too long. After returning to study the direction in my making has been fundamental to the progression from a hobbyist to an ambitious artist and space maker.
The first artwork was by father, as a custom car painter, I’d watch designs come alive. His garage workspace became my first exhibition as the walls filled with my paintings, as I accompanied him while his was working.
Your practice is developed around different mediums, a multidisciplinary approach. Tell us about your practice.
I work digitally and with mixed media, between maquettes, photography, collage and hand drawing, works do not conclude, allowing them to transform and evolve, sometimes melding multiple works. The gift of time to reappraise and re-consider, as a manifesto, allows growth and reflection on continued life experiences.
I have an experimentation led methodology, transitioning between 2D and 3D, in physical and digital realms. From model making, hand drawing, film and photography I work with digital outputs and often mixing the two, as evolutions of concepts and the other worlds generated.
What projects will you be developing during this year? What about the next one?
More recently my works and installation concepts are centred around the encounter and the audience decision making, generating works as an output of the experience of being within a space.
Creating a "token" of experience as a moment that can draw the audience into a space where the boundaries between the real and the virtual can blur. I have some work in progress concepts in development right now, and these will progress as a curation proposal and into hopeful physical exhibition.
What are some references you draw upon in your work? Are there any themes in particular that you like to focus on when creating?
I am interested in the sociology of spaces, human interactions, reactions to and experiences of spaces is key to my making and line of enquiry in her works. The in-between moments are a mystery to be encountered.
I explore themes of the experience of the liminal threshold, navigation through it, moments of the unknown and other-worldly spaces. Stemming from personal experience of the impact of grief, loss of identity and a transformative phase of life,
my interest is to explore emotion, sensory reactions and interactions within spaces created.
What do you say to the classic comment: "I could do it too"?
But you, didn’t!
We are at the end of this short interview, would you like to add something about your artistic research? How did you find the collaboration with our gallery?
The audience interaction is key to my artworks, insisting on encountering, through decisions required to engage with my works. Passive viewing will not be encouraged!
Super grateful for the support of artists and celebration of their works, providing a platform to share their work. Thank you for championing my passion.