In this interview, Amy-Leigh Bird discussed ‘The Psychology of Collecting, The Emotional Significance of Objects and Place’ also the exhibition ‘This Place Where I Stand’.

Amy-Leigh Bird graduated from the Painting & Printmaking BA Hons at The Glasgow School of Art in 2017 and in 2019 graduated with her MA in Creative Entrepreneurship with a distinction at The University of East Anglia. Whilst studying Amy-Leigh lived and studied in Jerusalem, Israel at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and has taken part in several groups and solo exhibitions including her first solo show at The Anise Gallery, Shad Thames, The Other Art Fair London and at The West End Centre. After her graduation, she was selected for Aon’s ‘Community Artist Award 2017’ and awarded the ‘Artist in Italy Residency 2018’ where she spent days walking about the Tuscan landscape collecting inspirational material for her work.

Since graduating, the award-winning artist has exhibited alongside Christian Boltanski at the Apple and the Lust Gallery in Edinburgh, at The Edinburgh Art Fair and at An Lanntair in Stornoway, after taking part in a two-week sailing residency with Sail Britain. This year she focuses on developing her research on the bones found on the Thames foreshore. She is currently living and working in London, developing her research on the psychology of collecting and the emotional significance of objects and place.

Amy Leigh-Bird takes interest in the detritus on the shores of rivers, seas, and lakes, which are regularly ignored by fellow mudlarks and beach scavengers alike. She strongly believes that the only way for people to dispose of the waste in today’s world is by investing more value in the materials that we consider as waste. Through art, we can reveal new perspectives by elevating these materials beyond images of neglect.