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Lydia's innovative approach and unique artistic vision have earned her recognition in prominent publications such as The Telegraph, The Guardian, Mayfair Times, and the high-end fashion magazine L'Officiel.

17/09/2026

Deviating from usual sculpture programming to support petition, a petition that is close to my heart.

There are two weeks left to get to the target of 100,000 signatures.

People living with

- endometriosis,
- adenomyosis
- fibroids
- PCOS
- PMDD
- menopause & menstrual disorders

Are not isolated into the camp of ‘women problems’ these conditions can be system wides and effect every facet of everyday life for the individual and loved ones.

These conditions sometimes hinder an individuals ability to physically and mentally go to work, the super market or interact socially. (Pretty much any normal activity)

You don’t need to understand what these conditions are or have even heard of them before to sign this petition.

When you do you are standing up for your mother, daughter, sister, cousin, wife, friend or stranger!

Also side note…. Some of these conditions have also been recorded in men too…. 🧬

If you are my friend or simply follow along because you like my art please do me this favour of signing the petition ❤️

Link in Bio or DM me and I’ll send it to you

❤️

13/09/2026

The ideas behind Habitat have been circling in my mind for a while, but they began to crystallise after visiting Abu Dhabi Art in 2025.

I found myself thinking about the environments we construct around us, from extraordinary architecture and luxury developments to carefully designed green spaces, and how different that can feel from being somewhere genuinely wild.

I have also been following developments around SpaceX and watching The Expanse. I can’t stop thinking about how we’re exploring the possibility of building new worlds beyond Earth while becoming increasingly disconnected from the one beneath our feet.

Then came the summer of 2026 in London.

Experiencing repeated periods of extreme heat made these ideas feel much less distant. I was also caught up in the disruption surrounding the bus fire at Westbourne Park, watching smoke rise through a city already struggling with the heat.

On a quieter, more personal level, I found myself missing walking through the woods with my dog.

All of this made me think about what a habitat actually is, and how much of ours we now construct and control.

I began to see a similar pattern in our digital lives. Algorithms, personalised feeds and echo chambers create individual environments around us, shaping what we see.

Habitat grew from bringing these seemingly separate experiences together. As we become doubly capable and incapable of designing, controlling, and personalising the environments around us, I wonder what it really means to inhabit a place and call it home.

It’s intriguing to be stuck inside the system I am examining.

Habitat is part of the Group show Distance In Between 
17 September – 1 October 2026 
Group exhibition at Souvenir 438 Space, in collaboration with Art Circles. 
Private View Friday 18 September, 6–9pm

Opening Hours Wednesday–Saturday, 11am–6pm
5 Kingsland Road London E2 8AA

12/09/2026

Plaster, Privacy and Barbara Hepworth
 I just saw Hepworth in Colour at The Courtauld, and what struck me immediately was the calmness and precision of Hepworth’s sculpture alongside the expansiveness of her drawings. 
Many of these weren’t preparatory studies; they existed independently while still speaking the same visual language as her sculpture. It reaffirmed something within my own practice: I may identify as a sculptor, but sculptural thinking doesn’t always have to result in an object.
 Up close to her plasters, you can see stains, tonal variations and traces of process across their surfaces. They haven’t been hidden; they’ve become part of the history of the object. 
Plaster is incredibly precious within my own practice. Clay gives me fluidity and intuition, but plaster is where another kind of precision begins. And there’s an extraordinary lineage here, Rodin, Arp, Giacometti, Hepworth, Moore and Noguchi all worked significantly with plaster.

It doesn’t become less meaningful simply because a sculpture might later exist in bronze or marble. 
What I wasn’t expecting was Hepworth’s private letters and how they made me think about being an artist today.

We’re expected to be constantly visible, accessible and documenting ourselves.

There’s a strange contradiction in that: we can record more of our lives than almost any generation before us, yet perhaps we’re less free in what we record because everything can immediately become public and interpreted. 
Perhaps there will be gaps in the future archive of my own practice not because nothing was happening, but because I chose to keep some things for myself.  📖 Read full writing on my website  🔗 Link in bio

08/09/2026

Distance In Between 17 September – 1 October 2026 
Group exhibition at Souvenir 438 Space, in collaboration with Art Circles. 
I’m pleased to be exhibiting as part of Distance In Between, bringing together international artists exploring separation, identity and the growing distance between ourselves and our environments. 
My most recent sculpture, Habitat, considers the increasingly constructed environments through which contemporary life is experienced. From luxury developments and designed green spaces to personalised digital worlds, the work reflects on how systems intended to organise and improve human life can also distance us from natural and collective experience. 
Private View Friday 18 September, 6–9pm 
Opening Hours Wednesday–Saturday, 11am–6pm
5 Kingsland Road London E2 8AA 
Art Circles  Niya Ruseva 
Exhibiting artists: Corn Shuk Mei Ho 何淑美 · Sam · Loreal Alana Prystaj · Emily Hana · Ben Wakely · Botren · Jaime Valtierra ·

13/08/2026

Sculpture is never just clay, bronze, or the finished object.

It is a rigorous, rhythmic process of translation.

Every piece demands an uncompromising mix of physical labor, engineering, and patience.

I choose to maintain complete creative agency by conducting every single stage of this journey myself:

Armature building to engineer the structural skeleton.

Clay sculpting to articulate the primary form.

Plaster waste moulding to translate the work to permanent form.

Plaster casting to produce the definitive positive model.

Sanding and refining to meticulously perfect the surfaces.

Silicone moulding to prepare the work for its final material transition.

Only when these intense, exacting phases are complete does the work progress to the foundry, and ultimately, to the collector.

There is a profound history embedded in these steps.

Plaster waste moulding, for instance, is a centuries-old tradition popularized during the Renaissance. Masters relied on it because plaster expands minutely as it sets, locking in the precise, microscopic textures of the original clay. But the technique is inherently sacrificial.

The original clay is destroyed during extraction, and the plaster mould itself must be chipped away—wasted—to liberate the single, unique cast within.

It is a high-stakes, unforgiving negotiation with material history.

sculpture transcends the object. It exists within the labor, the historical lineage, and the evolution of the Artist.

30/07/2026

Silence…

Can you hear it?

All the untold stories, all the misread signs.

When choosing to speak becomes impossible.

A risk.

Do I, do we, take that risk?

What’s wiser?
What’s safer?

Is it better for me, or is it better for them?

So we stay silent.

Silent and serene.

Quite like a butterfly, but bold like a bull.

🐂

26/07/2026

Technology isn’t interesting anymore. 
Or rather... technology on its own isn’t interesting anymore. 
A few years ago, scanning a sculpture or using AI felt groundbreaking. Today, those tools are becoming as normal as bronze casting or silicone mould making. 
What interests me now isn’t the technology itself.
It’s what it reveals. 
When I visited the Venice Biennale this year, I realised I was looking for evidence of the hand.
 
For me, technology has never been the subject. It’s another material.
I move constantly between clay and digital space. The scanner reveals forms I would never have found by hand alone, and those discoveries feed back into my sculptures. 
Technology doesn’t replace making.
It expands it. 
But the body remains central. 
Every sculpture carries the memory of touch, repetition, mistakes, and time. That’s something no algorithm can generate. 
Technology can help us solve problems. 
It can never replace the relationship between an artist and their material.
In the end, I think technology is exactly what it should be. 
An assistant.

✍️ Read full thoughts on the WRITING section of my website

🔗 in bio

01/07/2026

My practice revolves around human connection, explored through the intersecting histories of ancient cultures, science, spirituality, and technology.

I’m interested in how these systems intersect and return to the ways humans communicate and connect. 
I begin with a period of research, observation, and lived experience. From there, I open a bag of clay and sculpt through automatism.

Without a preconceived design, the form evolves intuitively.

Once the sculpture holds its own presence, I scan it using a gaming console. Rather than producing an accurate copy, the scan generates a warped and distorted digital form. 
The distorted scans become digital still lifes.

As I move through the pixels, searching for new forms, they begin to resemble symbols and marks more commonly associated with nature and prehistoric cultures than contemporary technology.

The process feels less like editing and more like excavation. 
This process of sculpting and scanning reflects the reality that we are no longer separate from our digital identities; each continuously informs the other.

Having grown up as one of the last generations to remember life before social media, while now witnessing the rapid emergence of AI, technology has never felt external to my experience.

It is another material through which I think and make. 
Each work inherits information from the one before it. Forms mutate, are translated, and reappear across sculpture, drawing, and digital media, creating a lineage that mirrors the way identity evolves through ones life.

Rather than existing as individual objects, the works form an interconnected family, each carrying traces of what came before. 
My process moves between the unseen, three-dimensional form, digital space, and two-dimensional representation.

Rather than treating these as separate mediums, I see them as interconnected states of my ongoing enquiry.

26/06/2026

We made it!!

We are coming to the end of the first ever cohort of Freshers by Fé Collective.

I am so immensely proud of the five artists who have spent the last year with us!

I am also incredibly grateful to everyone who has supported Fé Collective, those of you who joined us at the Fé Gala as well as the lecturers, our advisors, and our incredible board!

So please join us on July 7th to celebrate this year’s achievements and launch the Freshers end of year show!

11 Caledonian Road, N1 9DX

Tuesday July 7th, 6-9pm

See you there!!!

DM me to RSVP

Freshers: .leston .hoang_

Board:

Lecturers: .barra

25/06/2026

THIS WEEKEND!! 💫 come and see where the sculpting magic happens!

are part of Kensington + Chelsea Art Week’s Fringe Festival this year, showcasing their community of over 380 artists.

Event dates and times:

Saturday 27th of June:  11:00 – 18:00 Open Studios & activities (free tickets on Eventbrite and on the door)  2:30 - 3.00 PM Artist talk: Between Dimensions, First Floor, Studio 1.22   18.00 - 21.00 Evening party, performances & DJ.  Sunday 28th of June:

11:00 – 17:00 Open Studios & activities (Family day)

and I will be hosting an Artist talk at 2.30 pm Saturday discussing materiality and how it moves through different states and dimensions.

Both of our practices stem from historical handmade craftswomanship with collaboration from digital technologies reflecting the times in which we live.

Come and find us on floor 1, studio 1.22 - 🔗 in bio

Address

Marylebone
W1U 4NA

Website

http://www.lydiasmith.gallery/

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