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Molly Grad is an interdisciplinary artist and writer, working across sculpture, textiles, painting and public interventions. Her practice seeks out hidden histories and marginalised experiences in order to explore redemptive modes of expression. Grad's work is fuelled by concerns around the social and environmental responsibilities attached to acts of creation and creativity, interests that sit at the confluence of her current and previous identities as an Artist-Parent with a young child and with an extensive background in the luxury fashion industry. Grad's public interventions, or fleeting street sculptures, sit at the core of her practice. They involve a labour-intensive process which she describes as “corseting concrete”, requiring hours of repetitive physical movements across a public space as the artist threads soft brightly coloured fabrics through the crevices of neglected urban environments - a gesture intended to insist on visibility and to act as a catalyst for creating greater social awareness for society's so called invisibles, from mothers to construction workers. Through the process of creating the work, Grad comes into contact with members of the public, prompting organic conversations about consumer culture, identity and visibility:
"My fleeting street sculptures are an attempt to confront collective trauma within the urban environment through a weaving process to ask questions about visibility and our loss of empathy for the other. I am drawn to a range of spaces in a city, from transitional spaces like car parks to council estates and city centres - anywhere where I feel a sense of social neglect and seek to enact my attempt at a healing process", Grad.
For twenty years, Grad was designing for brands such as Stella McCartney and Yves Saint Laurent as well as costumes for artists and filmmakers such as Beyoncé and Martin Scorsese. Her fashion illustrations feature in the 2008 Thames and Hudson publication, Fashion Illustration by Fashion Designers, in which Grad's drawings feature alongside international designers, including the likes of Karl Lagerfeld, Yves Saint Laurent and Riccardo Tisci. Since leaving the fashion industry in 2019, Grad turned to art out of an interest in upending social hierarchies by engaging with the human experience in ways that her previous career path did not allow. While confronting themes around intergenerational trauma around the body and drawing on elements of the fashion world, such as corset and high heels, Grad's art practice actively avoids direct figuration around the female form:
"Perhaps there is just too much damage from my fashion career around the objectifying gaze, but for now I am compelled to focus on those of us in society who are treated as invisible, cutting out the female form and working with what is left, as part of my reparative process", Grad.
EDUCATION
Central Saint Martins BA, Fashion design, Womenswear, London (first class honours)
Central Saint Martins MA, Fashion design, Womenswear, London (first class honours)
Royal College of Art, Master of research with practice, Arts and humanities, London
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