About
Ahuva Zeloof is a London-based sculptor with a passion for stone carving. Iraqi-born, the artist spent her childhood and young adulthood in Israel. Here, the distinctive geographic profile of the Middle East played an early visual informant. Surrounded by the rich golden tones of its stone courtyards, olive trees and vivid architecture, faces and shapes emerged. The shadows cast by the sun over the mountainous landscape filled her subconscious imagination from a young age.
Ahuva moved to London in 1972 with her young family. With a keen interest and appreciation for art and design she immersed herself in what London had to offer whilst bringing up her young children. During the 1980s she started to practise and teach yoga, developing a deeper awareness and connection to the movement of the human body.
In the 1990s Ahuva started to explore her own interest in art and form, taking short courses in sculpture. Experimenting with different mediums she experienced an instant synergy with stone, carving out figures and faces from organic shapes. Ahuva’s style was characterised by smooth curves and folds that had a sensual, tactile element and which brought facets of the human experience into sharp relief. Some areas of the stone were filed until they were perfectly smooth, others parts were left rough and raw.
Ahuva completed an Art Foundation course at the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute in 2016. As time went on she began to articulate a deeper relationship with sculpture. Her focus was drawn to the energetic dynamic that was created as the images started to emerge from the stone. This perspective offered a platform for Ahuva to experiment with the point of completion; to play with the fine line between what the artist carves out of the stone and what is already there.