Lily Lavorato [b. London, 1995], currently living and working in Glasgow
email me at >>> lilylavorato@outlook.com
instagram >>> @lilylavorato

[EDUCATION]
2022 - 2023: Into the Wild (alternative artist development programme), Chisenhale Studios, London
2014 - 2019: BA Fine Art, University of Leeds

[SOLO EXHIBITIONS]
(2025): 'On the Sick Road', 3-26 October at Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh

[RESIDENCIES/AWARDS/DEVELOPMENT]
(current): Group Residency at Scottish Sculpture Workshop, Lumsden, Scotland
(current): Open Fund for Individuals awarded by Creative Scotland
(current): A-N Artist Bursary
(current): Visual Arts and Craft Makers Award, Glasgow
2025: ShapeeroMurray Residency, Glasgow
2025: Emerging Strategies (alternative artist development programme), Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh
2025: Patricia Sutcliffe Residency, The Art House, Wakefield
2024: Short-term residency at The Field, Derbyshire
2023: Interdisciplinary residency at Hospitalfield, Arbroath
2023: Into the Wild residency at Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridgeshire
2022-2023: Developing Your Creative Practice grant, Arts Council England
2022: Yorkshire Sculpture International Sculpture Network, Yorkshire
2021: Winter Residency at Yonder Gallery, Slaithwaite
2020: The Art House Graduate Residency, Wakefield
2019: Alan Mohun Memorial Prize, awarded by University of Leeds, School of Fine Art

[EXHIBITIONS/PROJECTS]
2025: Necrology, Haarlem Art Space, Wirksworth
2025: Salon Traders, Embassy Gallery Members Show, Edinburgh
2024: The Field is Forever, Two Queens Studio, Leicester
2024: Carving Our Way, March - September, Creative Recovery (Your Voice), Greenock, Scotland
2024: Summer Camp, Eastside Projects, Birmingham
2024: Touch me (I'm Trying), group show, SERF, Leeds
2024: The Garden Show, group show in my garden, Glasgow
2023: Mud Kitchen as part of Into the Wild's 'Tiny Interventions', GROW Hackney, London
2021/22: Building Warmth commissioned as part of SAFEDI, Social Artists for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion an AHRC fellowship led by MMU, SAN, & Axis working with social artists, marginalised communities and policy makers to rethink what inclusion in the arts means
2021: A Passing Place, duo show with Amelia Frances Wood, Assembly House, Leeds
2021: Vivavuci, Viaraffineria, Catania, Sicily
2020: Possible All Along curated by Gill Crawshaw, Online Exhibition
2020: Anharmonic Online Film Festival, International
2020: Between the Slime: The Art House Graduate Residency Showcase, Wakefield
2019: Cut the Mustard, Free Range Shows, Truman Brewery, London
2019: Cut the Mustard, University of Leeds Degree Show, School of Fine Art, Leeds
2019: Spread the Mustard, Freehold Projects, Leeds
2019: This is a gift to, The Brunswick, Leeds

[PRESS]
2021: Review - A Passing Place by Holly Grange

[WRITING]
(upcoming): envy~4~robbie, featured in 'The Roke and The Haar', Pink Trolley Press
2023: *always come home with something, featured in ‘t u r n i n g s’ a publication exploring the term ‘residency’
2023: Letter response to Emma Bentley Fox’s exhibition ‘Confessions of a Party Mom’

I am a sculptor currently living and working in Glasgow. Within my practice, I consider moments of transition, often through scarred forms, to explore the disorientation of sick journeys and my own complicated relationship of living within the South-Italian diaspora. With a language barrier to navigating these experiences, I look to points of rupture in bodies and landscapes to create works that tentatively tread a line between care and control.

I am currently working on a new body of work ‘On the Sick Road’ which traverses themes of sickness, belonging and grief informed by driving the nauseating road up to my family’s mountainous village in Calabria, South Italy, which we call the ‘sick road’. Navigating the tight, steep corners of the sick road speaks to the labour required of ill/disabled people to exist in ableist society and temporal interruptions of traumatic memory.

Working predominantly with found materials: cardboard, rusted metal, garden waste, with ceramics and metal armatures I am merging forms including shrines, harvesting netting, fencing and dried prickly pears. Along with this, I am developing a collection of writing which incorporates mis-translated oral family histories of insanity associated with mountain life, feverish dreams of being jealous of/becoming a car and thoughts on mountain time.