Amy Stephens is a writer of forms. Everyday materials are carefully constructed into objects that transform and disrupt the physical landscape. In this exhibition, artworks have been assembled over time in an unrestricted way. Architecture infiltrates objects, nature crosses into sculpture and minerals define the space.

Throughout her third solo exhibition at Art Seen, Amy Stephens stages potent encounters between the Cypriot landscape, sculptural materials and the human body. She creates dynamic spaces for questioning the relationships between people, places and the role of art to reframe a sense of environmental belonging.

In several works, steel structures are anchored by pieces of surplus Cypriot limestone, expanding the existing architecture and positioning the works as portals between the manmade and the natural. In Nature’s Stage, an arrow-shaped sheet of smooth steel is intersected by a roughly hewn stone. The work crafts a tension between form and function, its ever-changing patina alluding to the complexities of the symbiotic relationship between human and environment.

Theatre of Things captures a monochromatic photograph of elaborate ruined Doric columns, depicting an imagined stage for historical and atmospheric exploration. The welded brass frame transports the image into an opulent object.

my heart leaps up is a tiny colour photograph of a Cypriot rainbow where the title nods to a line of a poem by William Wordsworth as the image reflects the passing of time and the fleeting moment of nature as a stage. The path not taken depicts a fallen tree at the edge of the Troodos mountains suggesting the divergent paths offered by nature through a landscape.

In many of these images, rocky land masses are fragmented, a nod to the tectonic movements that created the strata beneath us. Here, acts of grounding and reconnecting with the earth do not prompt a capitulation to inertia, but rather a subtle immersion in motion, transformation and balance.

In Stephens’ minimalist interventions, nature is presented as a stage on which moments in time, environmental phenomena and living beings collide and interact. Playing out an ongoing drama of metamorphosis and shifting relations, these works call for a spatial re-engagement with the land around us.

Text by Anna Souter, Writer and Curator

Amy Stephens short bio

2008, MA Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art and Design, London | 2006, Postgraduate Diploma (Distinction) Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art and Design, London | 2001-2005, BA (Hons) Fine Art, University of Reading

Selected solo exhibitions Permanence of Space, Galerie Kandlhofer, Vienna, Austria (2024); Persistence of Land, Bo Lee and Workman Gallery, Bruton, UK, (2023); Nature knows only colours, Art Seen Maria Stathi, Nicosia, Cyprus (2021); fig-futures, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, UK (2018); Land | Reland [Portland], Upfor Gallery, Portland, Oregon, US (2018); fig2, 35/50, ICA Studio, London, curated by Fato? Üstek (2015).

Selected group exhibitions Lovington Sculpture Meadow, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London (2025); Frieze Sculpture 2023, The Regent’s Park, London (2023); If Not Now, When? Generations of Women in Sculpture in Britain, 1960 – 2022, Saatchi Gallery, London and The Hepworth Wakefield Gallery, UK (2023); New Things, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, UK (2023); I miss the land but does the land miss me? Art Seen Maria Stathi, Nicosia, Cyprus (2022); Psychotropics, New Art Centre, Roche Court, curated by Iwona Blazwick OBE (2020); Synergia, Museo Federico Silva, Mexico (2019).

Awards include Mtec Bursary, Frieze Sculpture (2023); The Henry Moore Foundation Research and Travel Grant, UK (2022); NiMAC, Artists' Residency, Nicosia, Cyprus (2022); UV estudios, Artists’ Residency, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2016); Villa Lena, Artists' Residency, Italy (2015); Triangle Award to Muscat, Oman with Gasworks Gallery (2013); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Artists' Residency, Dublin, Ireland (2011).

Parallel Events

Exhibition Tours
Guided tour of the exhibition by curator Maria Stathi

An introduction to the artist’s practice and her new body of work through her third solo exhibition Nature’s Stage in Cyprus. A conversation about the development of her artistic practice and its directions in recent years.

Tours are available by appointment for art-enthusiast groups and students.

Parallel Art Education Programme for Children aged 6–10
Designed & Delivered by: Elena Panayiotou (Museum Educator)
The programme is aimed at children aged 6–10.

Participation fee: €15

Saturday, 17 January 2026 | 16:00–17:30

Opening hours: Monday, Wednesday, Friday 16:00 – 19:00 or by appointment

For information, please contact Maria Stathi, Founder & Director, Art Seen+357 22006624 | info@art-seen.org | www.art-seen.org