Paloma Proudfoot
Glass Delusion
Glass Delusion was the first solo show in Scotland by Paloma Proudfoot, a graduate of Edinburgh College of Art. The exhibition brought together recent work with new sculpture and performance devised specially for our City Dome Gallery.
10 years after her participation in prestigious emerging artist platforms: Royal Scottish Academy’s New Contemporaries and Edinburgh’s Art Festival’s Platform, Proudfoot will present her solo exhibition at Collective from Friday 6 March – Sunday 24 May 2026.
Expanding on Proudfoot’s exploration of the female voice and body, the exhibition presented large scale ceramic friezes, depicting contemporary puppet-like figures often in uncanny medical poses where skin and organs are revealed, examined and stitched together. Proudfoot’s engaging installations combined historic references such as the 19th century French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot’s use of hypnosis to examine ‘hysteria’ in women with current explorations into women’s voices as technological ‘puppets’ such as Siri and Alexa.
Images: Eoin Carey
Supported by the Henry Moore Foundation.
About Paloma Proudfoot
Paloma Proudfoot is an artist who lives and works in London. Her practice combines sculpture, performance, and sound to explore the relationship between the human body and identity, as well as the gendered social histories that implicate it.
Proudfoot graduated from Edinburgh College of
Art in 2014 and in 2016 participated with Aniela Piasecka in Platform, Edinburgh Art Festival’s emerging artist programme.
Past solo exhibitions include Weavers of Speech /
Tessitrici del Verbo, Fondazione Bonolle, Vicenze
(2025); Lay Figure, The Lowry, Salford (2025); Voice
of the Play, The Approach, London (2024); The Three Living and Three Dead, Soy Capitán, Berlin (2023); The Memory Theatre, Bosse and Baum Gallery, London (2022).
Ladyfigure
The performance took place in the City Dome Gallery in dialogue with Proudfoot’s articulated mannequin sculpture of the same title. A choreographic conversation emerges between Piasecka and the ceramic double, each movement both constrained and amplified by the creaking second body. This exploration of corporeal ambivalence extended to Piasecka’s use of gaze, vacillating between inward scrutiny and external focus.
The live score was adapted from Ormston’s album, Impressions on and of guitar, and underpinned this strange interaction, echoing the use of the ceramic sculpture in the act of playing guitar.
Produced as part of Paloma Proudfoot’s exhibition, Layfigure was a live performance choreographed and performed by Aniela Piasecka with live music composed and played by Ailie Ormston.
Explore the exhibition
Image credit Eoin Carey
