White Chapel Somerset presents CLEMENTINA the debut solo exhibition of Somerset-based multidisciplinary artist Clementina Stiegler. Raised and currently living in Somerset, Clementina has been developing her expansive creative practice over the past three decades. Working fluidly across millinery, jewellery, textiles, printmaking, and painting, her work resists categorisation while maintaining a strong material sensibility.

​

This exhibition brings together over 80 pieces, including paintings, ceramics, and works on paper, that distill her multifaceted career into a deeply personal and visually rich presentation. Her approach, intuitive and instinctive, allows form, colour, and material to unfold with a quiet intensity.

​

The walls of the gallery are lined with works on paper that oscillate between figuration and abstraction. Clementina’s drawn, stylised  figures emerge from richly layered picture planes, inspired by ancient Egyptian and Mughal miniatures, yet entirely imagined. Her use of colour and texture echoes early modernist printmakers such as Joan Miró and Alexander Calder, nodding to the White Chapel Somerset’s Modern Originals collection.

​

A series of mixed media paintings, shown in contrasting pairs, demonstrate Clementina’s dialogue with paint itself: some evoke the elemental swell of sea and foam, while others suggest fire, ice, or mineral depths. These works assert the natural and autonomous power of the medium, balancing fluid spontaneity with deliberate restraint.

​

Alongside, her ceramics offer a tactile counterpoint. Many are crafted in white porcelain, incorporating natural materials like sea sponge, or fused with domestic objects. These works rest on terracotta or wooden plinths, emphasizing the fragility and skeletal whiteness of the clay. Other pieces—bowls glazed in oceanic blues or flecked with gold—mirror the layered logic of her works on paper. Some are inscribed with local flora and fauna observed from her studio at The Mill House in Isle Brewers, grounding her practice in the natural world of Somerset.

​

While Clementina’s work is deeply contemporary in its instinct and experimentation, it is also in quiet conversation with a lineage of modernist abstraction. Her parents—Scottish artist Catherine Sinclair and Polish émigré painter Caziel—provided a foundation rooted in clarity, risk, and form. Three large-scale works on paper act as subtle tributes to this legacy, embodying both reverence and departure.

Clementina is an exhibition shaped by material play, intuitive gesture, and deep-rooted place.