Carr is an international, experimental artist working on a wide range of interdisciplinary projects in partnership with Oxford University and Durham University. The work makes responses to natural processes and phenomena, such as magnetism, light, growth and ice structures. Carr’s practice involves collaboration with experts and world-leading researchers including engineers, biologists, geologists, cosmologists and theoretical physicists. The works produced are experimental in nature and include drawing, sculpture, kinetic works, photography, video and new media.
Carr has exhibited work at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, in collaboration with Jean-Paul Gaultier, been commissioned work by seminal musicians Radiohead, and was shortlisted for the Arts@CERN COLLIDE International Award 2016 and longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2017, 2019 and 2020. Carr is a member of The Royal Society of Sculptors.
Carr frequently exhibits and works internationally including the Verket Museum, Sweden and project spaces in Iceland, spending six months at the artists’ collective HEIMA, in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland, as an artist in residence and mentor.
Carr was awarded a Leverhulme funded residency in Durham 2017 entitled ‘Sculpting with Light’, investigating medieval and modern cosmology in collaboration with physicists, historians and cosmologists. She has presented papers at Oxford and Durham Universities and MIT, and has taken part in panel discussions at Sotheby’s and the Science Gallery Dublin.
In 2019 Carr was Artist in Residence at Durham University, working on themes of environment and place in connection with the elements and cosmology. In 2020 she was a fellow at The Institute of Advanced Studies working on an interdisciplinary project called Material Imagination to collaboratively produce biological smart materials. In 2021 she completed Solaris Nexum at Technological University Dublin, the largest permanent commission of Carr’s practice to date. In 2023 she established Torus Torus Studios, a joint practice with Colin Rennie which specialises in ambitious, large-scale works. In 2024 they unveiled Only Breath, a major kinetic artwork commissioned by Science Museum, London, as the centrepiece for the Energy Revolution Gallery. Only Breath has received international acclaim, winning Torus Torus Studios ‘2024 North East Visual Artists of the Year’ at the North East Culture Awards, Coda Awards top 100, placing 5th globally in the public vote, and being nominated for the 2025 PSSA Marsh Award for Excellence in Public Sculpture.
Raising questions about the nature of reality and our place in the cosmos, Carr invites the viewer on a journey of awakening and enlightenment. Captivated by our quest to know the unknown, see the unseen and exist in the spaces in between, Carr presents a fleeting comprehension of an unreachable place and state of being, present but not properly understood.
At first glance, Carr’s aesthetic is elegant and sedate. On closer inspection, a subtle order and mechanism becomes apparent. Carr generates a slow drawing in of the audience, not to view an image, or a moment, but to observe change over time. A single, transforming, crucial moment of change highlights the threshold of order to chaos where both states may exist at once. The boundaries of liminal spaces stress the notions of duality, opposites, contradiction, interplay and connectivity.
Through a manipulation of natural phenomena as media and by challenging our perception of our environment, Carr provokes change in the object and the viewer’s perspective in order to open a window into a world unknown.
EDUCATION
2000-2003 Camberwell College of Art – BA (Hons) Ceramics .
1999-2000 Central St Martins – B-Tec Foundation in Art & Design
PERMANENT COMMISSIONS
2024 - Only Breath - Energy Revolution Gallery at Science Museum London
2021 - Solaris Nexum - Central Quad, TU Dublin
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2022 - Black Matter - Middlesborough Art Weekender
2022 - Emergence - The Coro, Lake Dristrict
2020 - Meanwhile Space, Light Windows - Holocentre, New York
2020 - ‘Cloud of Unknowing’ - Aesthetica Art Prize 2020 - York Art Gallery
2019 - ‘Cloud of Unknowing’ - Sculpt, Art in the Churches, Ripon
2019 - ‘Weight of Light’ - York Festival of Ideas
2019 - Aesthetica Art Prize 2019 - York Art Gallery
2019 - ‘Empyrean' - Ushaw Historic House and Gardens, Durham
2018 - Suspensio' - The Damon Wells Chapel, Pembroke College, Oxford
2017-18 - 'Lux Mundi' - The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle
2018 - Hell, Heaven and Hope: A Journey through life and the afterlife with Dante - Palace Green Library, Durham
2017 - 'Ether' - The Damon Wells Chapel, Pembroke College, Oxford
2017 - Aesthetica Art Prize - York Art Gallery
2017 - 'Bodies of Movement' at 'Ely Cathedral Science Festival 2017', Ely
2016 - 'Struktur' - Verket Museum, Sweden
2016' - List í Ljósi' light festival. Iceland
2015 - Nesta Autumn Exhibition - London
2015' - Transitions' – Iceland
2014 - ‘Structures’ – Iceland
2013 - ‘The Sea Cabinet’ - Snape Maltings and Wilton’s Music Hall, London
2004 - 'Pain Couture' (in association with Jean Paul Gaultier) - Fondation Cartier, Paris
AWARDS
2025 - Nominated (as Torus Torus Studios) for the PSSA Marsh Award for Excellence in Public Art -
2024 - Winner (as Torus Torus Studios) of the North East Artist of the Year in the North East Culture Awards
2024 - Recipient of Unlock Creative Development grant
2024 - Shortlisted (as Torus Torus Studios) for the CODA Awards (placed 5th globally in the people’s choice award)
2024 - Shortlisted (as Torus Torus Studios) for the Blunden Art Prize
2020 - Longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize
2019 - Longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize
2017 - Leverhulme Trust Grant for Sculpting with Light Residency
2017 - Longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize
2016 - Shortlisted for the Arts@CERN COLLIDE International Award
2001 - Financial Times A&B Finalist Exhibition - National Theatre, London
RESIDENCIES
2019 - ‘Axis Mundi’, Durham University
2017 - 'Sculpting with Light, Durham University
2014-15 - HEIMA, Seydisfjordur, Iceland
RESEARCH PROJECTS
2022 - BSI - Collaborative research within the biophysical sciences, Durham University
2021 - Develop Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England - ‘Material Exploration for a Sustainable Practice’
2020 - Research Fellowship at The Institute for Advanced Studies - ‘Material Imagination’.
2016-19 - ‘Ordered Universe Project’ - Durham University
BROADCASTING AND TALKS
2024 - Guest Speaker at Tickbird and Rhino
2021 - Panelist for ‘In, Out and With: Public Art and the Contexts of Site’ at Public Art Now Conference
2020 - Guest Speaker for ‘The Future of the Art World’ at Sotheby’s Institute of Art
2020 - Guest Speaker for ‘Art+Science Reading Group: Together into the Unknown’, Science Gallery Dublin, Trinity Long Room Hub
2020 - ‘The Delicate Balance of Hybrid Arts: Concept, Language and Scale’, Institute of Advanced Studies, Durham University
2020 - ‘Natural Phenomena as Media:Challenging Perception and Experience Through Multimedia Artworks’, Institute of Advanced Studies, Durham University
2019 - ‘Alice Through the Purple Haze: The Body of Colour and its Absence’ Napa Lighted Festival, Napa
2018 - ‘Sculpting with Light: Cosmological Perspectives’ Pembroke College, Oxford
2018 - ‘The Body of Colour: A Medieval Perspective’, MIT
2019 - Panel speaker for’ Visual Art of Imagination’ at York Festival of Ideas
2018 - Panel speaker for FLUX Events: ‘Site-Specific Art’
2018 - ‘Sculpting with Light: Learning Medieval’ at Trinity College, Dublin
2018 - Creative Lives at Sunderland University
2017 - BBC Radio 3, Free Thinking - Guest on ‘The In Between’
2017 - ‘Dante to Dark Matter’, Durham University
PUBLICATIONS
2025 - Collect Artwork - 101 Contemporary Artists and More, Volume 8
2025 - Collect Artwork - 58th Special Edition of the magazine ‘Metamorphosis’
2024 - Aesthetica Magazine, May 2024 - Interview for ‘Only Breath’
2020 - ‘The Lives We Live’ Grangegorman Public Art
2020 - 'Future Now', Aesthetica Art Prize Anthology
2020 - 'Future Now', Aesthetica Art Prize Anthology
2020 - 'Future Now', Aesthetica Art Prize Anthology
2016 - Struktur. Avesta Art