The daughter of creatives and the sister of hippies, Emma Gibson is a 29-year-old London-based installation artist, or, as she puts it, “a doer of general creative things.” She deals with often controversial, intimate psychological issues using mixed media and objects that encourage the viewer to engage with them. Gibson uses recognisable social signifiers in such a way that questions of sanity, identity, morality and the self are brought up. She “enjoys being freaked out” and is self-described as being “curious.” In her mixed media installation Jar/bonesetter (2007), she investigates eerie topics such as “the practice of setting bones”, and in Die Now Pay Later (2010) she brings up the debate concerning assisted suicide using the language of fruit- and sweet-machines. A deep and contemplative thinker she is none the less cheery, very chatty and likes to laugh a lot. On the one hand bubbly, she also profoundly sites the words of Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata as her rules to live by. Here the multifaceted Gibson speaks about the importance of balance and notebooks.
Text by Lucia Davies
Poppy de Villeneuve is a photographer and film director. She shoots regularly for the New York Times, The Telegraph, and Vogue. Her most recent film project involved five short films set in Central Park for the New York Times. In 2010, several of her works were exhibited at Colette in Paris.
