Lavinia Harrington (b.1986) is an Italian-British artist based in London.

Lavinia is moved by how soft, vulnerable materials can hold and emanate deeply charged emotions. Through making, she is searching for ways to materialise sensation. The works that grow from this are not representations but embodiments. For this reason, questions of care and empathy are at the heart of her practice. Though rooted in personal experience, her works arise out of a far greater web of interconnection with the living world, and evidence her conviction that knowledge is felt.

Lavinia works directly with her hands, embedding pastel into paper, which she folds, unfurls, soaks and rubs until the tactile sensibilities resonate with what she is exploring. Her works emerge from an accumulation of action and erasure, contemplation and somatic movement, and are guided by visceral reactions to colour. The process is revelatory and working out the means of making becomes a journey enmeshed with meaning. Lavinia’s research centres around how the body stores and can transform trauma and can learn to move compassionately through periods of chronic illness. Accordingly, her works embrace the intimate tension between vulnerability and resilience.