Jilly Cunningham was born in London of Anglo-Hungarian parents. Her father, a Hungarian Jew, was a doctor fleeing Nazism just before the second world war. The family settled peacefully in the Leicestershire countryside with Jilly returning to London to study sculpture at Hammersmith’s College of Art at age 18.

After graduating she packed a small bag and went hitch-hiking through Europe, South America and Israel.

Returning to London three years later she worked as an Art Therapist in a large psychiatric hospital (Tooting Bec) for the next five years, fascinated by the connection between art and psychology, splitting her time between the hospital and taking private commissions.

Longing for solitude, silence and trees, she relocated to Cambridgeshire, inhabiting a series of crumbling cottages for which she created exotic interiors, marrying artistic flair with practicality.

Jilly’s commitment to and development of sculptural techniques was unceasing throughout her time in Cambridgeshire and produced two major pieces of work; a six by nine foot relief sculpture  commissioned by Linton College Cambridge and a large mural for the Saffron Walden Museum's Egyptian Room. She also taught sculpture and pottery at Friends School, a renowned Quaker school, and taught private lessons for six years.

Jilly then embarked upon her Cultural Legends series, and was commissioned to make sculpture portraits of many famous faces, including Ken Livingstone, Jools Holland, Benjamin Zephaniah, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and Bernie Grant, to name a few.

Jilly is fascinated by the life casting process, and "stealing" the magical essence of the personality,and then boldly displaying the man/woman behind the "mask. "

Jilly then works the surrounding details of the piece using in depth conversations with the sitter and includes important features, past and present from their lives. On a few occasions the work has been a complete flight of fantasy, based solely on her perception and of course respect, for the cultural legend.

Always a restless and inquisitive artist, after completing the Cultural Legends series she flew to Portugal to work in a remote mountain village, in the Algarve, experimenting with glass and resin figures.

She was swiftly commissioned to make a sculpture for an Algarvian library but also spent two years discovering the new and challenging techniques

of Kiln-formed glass, experimenting with glass and resin and producing a strange and unearthly collection of glass heads. Five years later, she has returned back home to London.

Jilly says she likes to cross boundaries. Working always to be sculptural, in a traditional way, but working the glass to make the solid become spiritual, ethereal, shimmering.

Jilly's use of colour and light creates the fluid and mythological like a piece of glass found in the sea, after many years.

Her influences come from architecture, cinema and surrealism: Alfred Waterhouse, Rene Magritte, Paula Rego, Pedro Almodovar and the Czechoslovakian artist Stanislava Grebenickova.  

Jilly’s sculptures have been exhibited in galleries in London, Cambridge and Portugal; she has been featured in British and Portuguese national newspapers including the Independent and will soon be opening an exhibition of her Cultural Legends series.

Jilly has now relocated to one of her old haunts - south Cambridgeshire where she loves the sense of freedom, space and open skies.

Upcoming Events

This year, Jilly has exhibited at REFLECT 2010, the london glass fair in Kensington, and at the i2 Contemporary Art Gallery. She is currently exhibiting at the Riverslade Gallery at 5 Jubilee Court, Cambridge CB10 1EH.

On the 26 September 2010, Jilly can be found exhibiting at the Cambridge Glass Fair at Chilford Hall, Balsham Road, Linton, Cambridge CB21 4LE.