Emma Neuberg is a British-French multidisciplinary artist based in LA and Oxford. Known for her abstract paintings, tapestries and light projections, her work radiates an effervescent aura in stretched, draped and projected canvases capturing the cultures in which she works. Californian Light and Space artist Laddie John Dill likens her work to American artists Joan Snyder and Charles Schucker. Her work is in the private collections of Grayson Perry (UK), Simon Wilson (UK), FKP Art Collection (Greece), Molly Barnes (USA) and the public collections of the Peloponnese Folklore Foundation (Greece), Central Saint Martins’ College of Art & Design (UK), the V&A online archive and ChelseaSpace, University of the Arts, London (UK).
Her first group show, Artists as Rugmakers, with Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, Tim Nicholson, Louisa Creed, Kaffe Fassett, Roderic Hill and EQ Nicholson toured the UK in 1994 and 1995. Artists as Rugmakers heralded the synthesis of British Modernism and textiles in a unique show bringing together a celebrated artist family and associates working together to translate paintings into textiles. Following this, Neuberg’s quilted work, Nureyev (polyester and cotton, 36in x 72in/0.91m × 1.83m, 1996), was selected for the AIDS Memorial Quilt permanent collection in San Francisco, California.
In 1997, whilst reading Textiles at the Royal College of Art in London, Neuberg was awarded the Sir Winston Churchill Lifetime Fellowship for her innovative contribution to Industrial Print Technologies for the Arts. During this period she developed pioneering techniques for printing long-life materials and this work was internationally recognised with awards from the Textile Institute (UK), the British Federation of Women Graduates, TechTextil (Germany), FESTO (Germany) and PFAFF (Germany) and the British royal livery companies including the Worshipful Company of Fan-makers and the Worshipful Company of Weavers.
In 2000, she was awarded a PhD in Printing Methods for Synthetic Materials by the Royal College of Art where she worked with Vivienne Westwood, Nigel Coates and Ron Arad in the School of Materials. Since then she has been a visiting lecturer at Central Saint Martins, Chelsea College of Art & Design, Royal College of Art, Russell Group, V&A Museum, the Institute of Materials and the Royal Museums Greenwich. In 2007, she was awarded the Creative Pioneer award by the National Endowment for the Science Technology & Arts UK.
Following an Artist in Residency at Chelsea College of Art & Design in 2012, she exhibited with Nick Hornby, Ryan McClelland and Willem Weismann at Wimbledon Space (London) and Brian Chalkley and Kangwook Lee at Chelsea FutureSpace (London). In 2013, she was selected for the Young Masters’ Art Prize UK by Cynthia Corbett at the Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London, and in 2016, was named one of Great Britain’s ‘New Fabric Designers’ by acclaimed design journalist, Becky Sunshine, in The Observer Magazine and The Guardian.
In 2018, Saff Williams, then curator at Studio 7 Projects (and host to Frieze Academy), wrote of Neuberg’s solo show, Drapes, at Aldgate Tower, East London:
“Drapes is an immersive forest of twenty fabric folds patterned with brightly bold and textured foliage, bringing the outside world in. Totems to the natural world, this installation subtly breathes in the space as the geometric artworks softly flutter in the breeze and move the viewer’s eye from the artworks’ surface to their abstracted depths.”
In 2019, Neuberg had her fourth solo show, Emma Neuberg: Memory of Colour, at The Forge gallery in East London and part of Craft Central UK. Curated by Helen Kemp (National Festival of Making), Neuberg presented a giant, site-specific installation of her tapestry sculpture Drape. Measuring 13 x 6 x 68 feet (4m x 2m x 21m), this was an immense piece of tapestry work that stands alone in its scale, vision and narrative. Shown alongside paintings from 2014 to 2019, the installation conveyed a statuesque statement of intent against oppression and denial in the steely shadows of the Victorian ship-building yard.
A tension between abuse and escapism drives Neuberg’s practice. Her creative vision focuses on thwarted voices in society and those caught in oppressive and abusive cultures. Neuberg’s work addresses the effects of culturally-obstructed access and their cumulative affects. She reveals and explodes the mute, suppressed spaces where cultural obstruction compounds exclusion, ambivalence, assumption, projection, exploitation, assault, dismissal and denial; her works and installations convey the physical and psychological consequences of these and are delivered as entry points for illumination and dialogue.
The artist describes her paintings as activating works. They present a cognitive, gestural process that culminates in unpredictable color-rich canvases that emit a powdery glow with blended colors and vibratory effects. She uses a performative painting technique that she developed at the Royal College of Art in the late 1990s and favors patterned and textured, end-of-roll ground fabrics over traditional Dutch linen. She paints, prints and soaks cotton, paper and polyester to stretch, suspend, glow, reflect, radiate, animate and speak in blended and thought-provoking volumes.
Building upon her creative, pedagogic and industrial vision, Neuberg is also Founding Director of Textiles Hub London, a collective of international artists and designers working with materials in exciting and innovative ways for publication and exhibition. Since 2010, she has supported over fifty artists in their creative development in this unique north London project space. During their time in the studio, several artists have been the recipients of international accolades including the Loewe Foundation, Sarabande Foundation, the Queen Elizabeth II Trust and Timberland’s Earth Keeper Prize. In 2017, the hub featured as the backdrop for the HBO/BBC series Civilizations (a remake of Kenneth Clarke’s BBC TV original) for its color section presented by Philip Ball, author of the seminal Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color.
In 2020, Neuberg was recipient of the prestigious Arts Council England Development Award for Painting into Textiles, a project affording her the opportunity to develop new large institutional installations. In 2020 – 24, she is a Lincoln City Fellow in Southern California for her latest gesamtkunstwerk project that translates hope-filled canvases into scaled up environments.
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