Description
It is not surprising that Sophie descends from a family of engineers (and her initial training was in structural engineering), though she has now chosen to follow the more imaginative side of the design process. It is, though, this experience that informs her practice and she continues to be fascinated by the rigour and discipline of mathematical progressions and fractals, playing with symmetry and asymmetry, order and chaos, tiny and huge, at the same time. Often she uses the computer to design and experiment, but it is a very important part of her practice that the work is made by her own hand. With the many small inaccuracies and mistakes that are made through human error, she breathes life into each completed piece and raises it above a mechanical design exercise. By changing the viewer ‘s angle of vision or distance, each work has a dynamic presence within a space. Whilst some works are two-dimensional, they invite the viewer to move; to look closely and then to stand back with a gaze that is constantly searching, unable to ever quite see the whole pattern at once. “Like a starry night, the more you look the more you see, and it is this searching process that interests me, that if only you could go deeper into the pattern then all would be resolved.” Sophie Arup
